I have been using Pages for a lot of my desktop publishing needs while on my Mac, however, I still need people in the PC world to view my documents. I have been using the Export function quite a lot and noticed that it does not have a shortcut key next to it. What is its shortcut key?

This is a great question and actually a problem that I have encountered when using other programs. As I love to use shortcuts I find it rather annoying when the one command I use the most doesn’t have a shortcut. The solution: Create one yourself.

Step 1: Go to your System Preference and click on Keyboard and Mouse Pane.

Step 2: Select the Keyboard Shortcuts Tab as shown above. Then click the + to add a new shortcut.

Step 3: In the dialog box that pops up above just select the application you want to create the shortcut for, in this case, Pages. Don’t worry if it isn’t listed, just click other and select the application via the Finder popup window.

Step 4: Enter a menu title. This is the only really important part that you can screw up on. You must enter the command exactly as it shows up in the application so in this situation the command in Pages is “Export…” Note: if you are creating the ellipsis for this command you can type it by pressing Option+;

Step 5: Enter your keyboard shortcut. For this example I went with Cmd+E

Step 6: Restart the application you created the shortcut for and just like that you have a new shortcut. It will even show up in the menu for those times when you forget the newly created shortcut.

Now you can all go ahead and create new shortcuts for any application you want.

First, find that file (in my case, a .torrent file) and right click (or control + click) it. Select “Get Info” from the menu.

From this menu, click the triange beside the “Open With” pane to reveal the default application switcher.
Select your app from the drop down menu (I want Transmission) and then click “Change All“
Voila! Close the window!
Note: Oh, and if you only want that single file to open in that program, and all the rest to still stay in the other type, don’t click “Change All”. Just close the window.

To activate Spotlight, you can either click on the magnifying glass on the top right of your screen, or use the keyboard shortcut: command + spacebar.
Once you activate Spotlight, type in what you want to find. Every file, from applications to emails to documents, are indexed by your computer.

Find the file/application you want, press enter and it will open the document or application.

Why is this so important? Well, I never use the dock anymore. I rarely use the Finder to find stuff. Spotlight is where I go for everything! It’s faster than taking your hands off of the keyboard or searching through endless finder windows for that one document from last year…

Remember: command + spacebar!

Notes:
1. Top Hits (most frequently accessed files or applications) are always the first hit at the top and are automatically highlighted. This makes it super easy to launch applications. Just hit enter when you see the name of your favourite application!

2. Everything in your documents –not just their names– are indexed by Spotlight. If you can’t remember the file name, but can remember that it had the words “cashflow” and “Greg Benson” in it, type them into Spotlight and the document will show up

3. If you just want to see where a file is rather than open it (like if you want to copy it to your portable USB drive), highlight it, then press command + enter to open its enclosing folder

4. If you don’t see the file you’re looking for, hit “show all” for a longer list

5. If you’re looking for a specific type of file, you can specify what you’re looking for right in Spotlight. Just type in a keyword or two, then kind:jpeg, kind:document, kind:pdf, kind:photoshop… you get the idea

6. Want to know a word’s definition, synonym, etc? Type it into Spotlight and select definition!