Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

The LaunchPad app is a quick way to launch applications on your Mac. You can use keyboard shortcuts and the search function to launch any app in seconds. You can also use LaunchPad to arrange your apps, group them, and even uninstall some apps. Learn for unusual tips and tricks for using LaunchPad.

You can use backgrounds in iMovie in a number of ways. They can be placeholders between clips, or backgrounds to elements like titles. You can also put backgrounds on top of other video as overlays. Backgrounds can be customized somewhat, or you can use your own image or photo.

You can use special cell types like checkboxes, ratings, sliders and pop-up menus to represent values in cells in Numbers. These cells can make it easier to enter data, or they can visually represent the data in a better way. You can use the values of these cells just like regular numbers and other data types.

In Keynote you can record your voice and the timing of slides. This recording can then be used to play back the presentation automatically. You can also use this timing to export the presentation as a video.

Markers are a simple tool in iMovie that allow you to create points in your video where the playback head and other elements will snap. You can use them to mark places to add things later, or to let you easily line up overlays, titles or other elements. You can add markers while the video is playing in the preview pane. They are similar to beat markers in previous versions of iMovie.

While you can use a variety of tools to create basic slideshows, Keynote may be the most powerful tool for quickly creating interesting photo slideshows. You can instantly create a slideshow by dragging and dropping photos from the Finder into the thumbnail list in Keynote. You can then add transitions, text, shapes and other objects to slides as needed. You can also interject other types of slides. There are many export options as well, including video and HTML for your web site.

You can set your text to appear in one, two or more columns. Using multiple columns can make it easier to include elements like photos in your documents. You can flow your text between different numbers of columns on a single page, but it can be trickily to implement.

Numbers can automatically fill in cells for you if you want to repeat a value, or create a sequence. You can use Autofill to add a set of sequential numbers or dates to cells. You can also have the cells follow a pattern. If you are using tables properly, formulas included in cells will repeat as you add new rows to the table.

Once you have created your video masterpiece, you may want to put some professional-looking credits at the end. You can do this with the Scrolling Credits title effect in iMovie. But with a little work, you can make the credits look even better by moving them over and adding images that appear to the left as the credits scroll by.

You can use the Finder's search function to find files by content or name. You can further narrow the field by adding more search criteria, like file type and date. You can also save searches as Smart Folders that will automatically update to show you the latest results for specific criteria as the files on your drive change.

You can use keyboard shortcuts to easily capture your Mac's screen, or a portion of the screen. Different shortcuts indicate whether you want to save the capture to a file or to the clipboard to paste into a document. You can also use the Grab tool for timed captures, and QuickTime Player for video captures.

You can use text hyperlinks to create complex navigation between slides in Keynote. In this example, we'll create a quiz that links answers to different slides. You can export this type of presentation as HTML, or use it in Keynote with settings to lock out other types of navigation.

Learn how to use the IF function to perform calculations in Numbers. IF is an important function to learn if you want to graduate to creating more advanced spreadsheets. You can use it to test a value in one cell and return two different values depending on the results of that test. Also learn related functions like SUMIF and COUNTIF.