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1. When starting up your computer (or right after you restart) hold down the Command and Option keys (at right) until the following dialog box appears: |
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· Its a good idea to rebuild your deskop at least once a month. There's an invisible file on your Mac called the Desktop that keeps track of where all the files are stored and what applications they belong to. Over time the Desktop file can get large, or even corrupted. Icons may begin to change or disappear, and double-clicking on some files won't open their corresponding application any more. Rebuilding the Desktop cleans up the desktop file and fixes all of these problems.
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1. When starting up your computer (or right after you restart) hold down the Command and Option keys (at right) until the following dialog box appears: |
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2. Click OK. A status bar will pop up, showing the progress of the rebuilding. It may take a little while to finish.
When your Macintosh freezes (or "hangs") you may not be able to move the pointer with your mouse; you may be able to move the pointer, but unable to select items in menus or in dialog boxes; or you may be stuck in a dialog box (or a series of dialog boxes) that won't go away. When your Macintosh freezes, here is a sequence of steps you can take to "unfreeze" it:
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1. If your application freezes press the Command, Option, and Escape keys (at right) until a dialog box like the one below appears: |
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2. Click on Force Quit.
You should be aware that pressing those three keys simultaneously may quit an application other than the one that appeared to be running in the foreground when the problem occurred. If you have any open documents that you have made changes to but have not saved recently, it is a good idea to press the Command and S keys before attempting to force quit an application. If you are successful in forcing an application to quit, you should quit all your open applications, saving any open documents, and immediately restart your computer. Of course, if you are unsuccessful in the "force quit" you will have to restart your computer.
A keyboard command is a combination of keys that sends a command to the
computer, as if you had chosen the command from a menu or clicked a button. At
least one key in the combination is the Command Key (
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or another modifier key (Shift, Option, or Control).
Keyboard commands are listed next to the menu commands they correspond to. Probably the most important keyboard command is the Save command. If something were to happen to your monitor (and you could no longer see the screen) or if your mouse malfunctions you can use this shortcut to save your work. And this shortcut works in just about every application.
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Instead of choosing the Save command in the File menu, you can type Command + S |
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Next time you go to a menu to select a command (this holds true whether you are in the Finder or in an application) look to see if there is a keyboard equivalent listed. In this example, New Folder has a keyboard equivalent of Command + N. Pressing the Command and N keys on your keyboard will produce the same result as if you had selected New Folder from the File menu. |
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Most common commands have keyboard shortcuts. Here are a few more examples:
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Command + A |
Select All |
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Command + N |
New |
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Command + P |
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Command + Q |
Quit |
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Command + W |
Close |
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Command |
Control |
Option |
Power |
Escape |
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Action |
Keyboard Shortcut |
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Startup without extensions/ |
Shift |
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Bring up extension manager |
Space bar |
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Rebuild Desktop |
Command-Option |
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* Zap PRAM (Get Approval First) |
Command-Option-P-R |
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Bring up dialog for |
Power key |
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Force current application to quit |
Command-Option-Escape |
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Restart the computer |
Command-Control-Power key |
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New |
Command + N |
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Open |
Command + O |
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Select All |
Command + A |
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Save |
Command + S |
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Command + P |
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Close |
Command + W |
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Quit |
Command + Q |
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Cut |
Command + X |
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Copy |
Command + C |
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Paste |
Command + V |
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UnDo |
Command + Z |
