These days, we all spend an increased amount of time typing an ever increasing amount of emails and documents. There’s no way that we’d get through it all without a couple of tips, hints and useful apps to speed up workflow.
One of the things we come up against is formatting, especially when posting in information (specifications etc).
People have been known to put everything in and finally correct all the font style, size and colour issues. Hitting CMD + T will bring up the Fonts box, a simple but powerful portal to the available font library. At Mac Aid we have our corporate identity on hand within the Favorites: you can “Add to (your) Favorite” list by clicking on the cog button bottom left of the Font box (CMD+T) once you have chosen your appropriate combination of style and size.
Alternatively you can copy and paste text styles with Apple Mail (and other Apple applications)
To copy and paste text styles in Mac OS X Mail:
- Position the cursor in text that carries the formatting you want to copy.
- Press Command-Option-C (like the normal text copy, but with Option).
- Highlight the text you want to apply the formatting to.
- Press Command-Option-V (like the normal text pasting, but with Option).
Finally you can paste and match the text style of the surrounding text with the following command: Command-Shift-Option-V (Paste and Match Style)
Furthermore if you find yourself often typing out the same thing, consider using a text expander.
We’ve covered this before in our March edition. Click here to read
New to Mac?
We have had a new staff member join us a couple months back in the accounts department and like (shudder) some people she hadn’t used a Mac very often.
To help speed up workflow one of the things we did was present a list of shortcuts to refer to. Simple commands such as save (and save often) close a window or switch applications are easily overlooked early on.
This practice can be applied to specific software as well as operating systems: it’s not uncommon to have a ‘cheat sheet’ for shortcuts for video or music editing software synch as Final Cut Pro and Logic, photo editing software such as Photoshop or Lightroom, or even MYOB and Moneyworks.
As such, find a couple of suggested lists to refer to, and the fantastic Cheatsheet app, which overlays a list of shortcuts and command for the currently selected application when the Command key is held.
View the Cheatsheet app on the App Store here
Cheat Sheets
