Macworld | Time-Saving Tips: At the office (Plus! Exclusive Bonus Tips!)

Macworld just posted Time-Saving Tips: At the office, a collaborate effort between Rik Myslewski, Kirk McElhearn and me. Rik brings you tips about Microsoft Excel and Apple’s Numbers, Kirk provides tips for Keynote, iCal, iChat, and several other applications. You’ll find tips from me for Word and Pages.

But as a special bonus… there were a few tips that didn’t make the Macworld cut, which I’m happy to provide here free of charge!

Turn off URL and E-mail Detection in Pages and Word

When I’m writing it very rarely makes sense for me to have clickable URL or email address in my documents and it’s a hassle to go back and correct every automatically detected address once I’m done writing. Fortunately both Word and Pages let you turn this feature off.

In Pages, open the Pages menu, select Preferences and click on the Auto-Correction tab. Remove the check from the Automatically Detect Email And Web Addresses option.

In Word 2008, open the Word menu, select Preferences, click on the AutoCorrect item. Select the Autoformat As You Type tab, and under the Replace As You Type section, deselect the Internet And Network Paths With Hyperlinks option.

Add Folders to Pages’ Media Browser

Apple’s iWork programs—along with many other Leopard apps—use OS X’s Media Browser to make it easy for you to add images from iPhoto, audio from iTunes, and movies from iMovie to your documents. But you don’t have to import your media into these iLife programs to access them from the Media Browser. Instead, you can just drag the folder that contains those items to the appropriate section of the browser. For example, if you have a folder of audio clips that you want to use in your document, click on the Audio tab and drag the folder from the Finder to the top window of the Media browser. You should see a new folder appear in the window called Folders. If you don’t, scroll down in the window until you see it. Open this folder and you’ll see the folder with your audio files in it. Open that folder and you can drag any of the audio files into your document. When you’re done with the folder you can right-click (control-click) the folder and from the menu that appears click Remove Folder.