Getting Help

Your Mac comes with several textbooks worth of excellent documnetation.

Quick Tips

Click on the Help menu in the menu bar and type in the command you're looking for or what you want to do.

You can see here that the menu command has been highlighted so I can find it again, and some more in-depth articles related to what I'm looking for have been pointed out below with orange "?" next to them. I can click on the result in the Help menu or the File menu, or click on an orange "?" for more information.

to ➔

You'll notice that my last search has popped up again. This is for convenience, in case I didn't get it last time. You can click the "x" on the right to get the normal Help menu back.

Instructions

If you're looking to do something that you want a more detailed explanation for, you can also start in the Help menu. You can also type in the search bar, but click on an orange "?" instead, or, to browse by category, click "App Help" where "App" is the name of the application you're currently using.

I click on "Pages Help" and get presented with this nice little window.

Clicking "Overview" gives me a summary of the app: what it can do, what it's good for.

Clicking "Show Topics" or that button gives me a nice little list of categories of things I can do. I can browse the list to find what I'm looking for, and click it to get a set of instructions.

What if I can't find what I'm looking for?

You can search. By clicking in the search box in the top right, I can type in some words related to what I'm looking to do. If that doesn't work, try using less words or related words to see if your topic comes up.

➔

Here you can see a search and an article. Click on the search bar in the top right to search. Type in some words related to what you're looking to do, and press "return" on the keyboard. If you can't find what you're looking for, try using less words, or synonyms. After clicking on an article in the search results, it opens it for me, and highlights it in the sidebar so I can see what category it's in and maybe look at related articles. You'll notice the article is sorted into headings that I can click to open so I can easily see the whole article with minimal scrolling. You can also see a quick tip next to the light bulb that will make doing this easier. At the end is often a "SEE ALSO" section that contains links to other articles that are related to this one, in case I still don't get what is going on.

Also notice that the search results are sorted into two sections. The first section is related to the app I'm using now. The bottom section contains articles related to what I searched, but not related to Pages, in case I was maybe looking in the wrong app.