Working for a living doesn't have to mean living at work. Whether you're balancing a budget in Excel or crafting a high-powered presentation in Keynote, there are plenty of ways to save time and still impress your boss.

Re-create WordPerfect Keyboard Shortcuts
If you're a WordPerfect user who has recently converted to the Mac, you may be frustrated that Word and Pages lack keyboard shortcuts for your often-used commands. For example, WordPerfect users accustomed to pressing control-F7 to insert a new footnote will be stuck taking the long route in Word and Pages; both programs require that you open the Format menu to insert a footnote.

Fortunately, you can smarten up both of these programs with a program like Stairways Software's US$36 Keyboard Maestro. This handy program lets you record a macro for any menu item in any application, and then assign your choice of keyboard shortcut to it. So in a few simple steps, you can make all your favorite WordPerfect keyboard shortcuts perform the same commands in Pages and Word.--Jeffery Battersby

Make Background Images Clickable
If you often add images to Pages word-processing documents--for example, to place a digital copy of your signature in a letter--you may be frustrated that Pages makes it so difficult to move an image to another location in a document. Word-processing documents treat images as background objects and make them unselectable once they've been placed and deselected (this isn't a problem in page-layout documents). To regain control of background objects, choose Arrange: Make Background Objects Selectable. Unfortunately, it's not possible to save a document template with this feature already enabled.--JB

Remove Misspelled Words from Custom Dictionaries
Accidentally adding misspelled words to a custom dictionary can lead to trouble: misspelled words in important documents. But not to worry--fixing them is probably easier than you think.

In Word, select Preferences from the Word menu and click on the Spelling And Grammar button. Under the Spelling section of that preference pane, click on the Dictionaries button. In the window that appears, select Custom Dictionary and then click on the Edit button. A new Word document that contains all the words in your custom dictionary will open. Correct the misspelled words; then save and close the document.

To correct Pages' dictionary, you'll need Two AM Software's free Dictionary Cleaner. Dictionary Cleaner is a preference pane that lets you make changes to the custom user dictionary that many applications use to check spelling. Once you've installed the pane, open System Preferences and click on Dictionary Cleaner. A new preference pane in which you can delete words from or add words to your custom dictionary will open. You may need to log out of and back in to your user account in order for the changes to take effect.--JB

Import Word Styles into Pages
Pages lets you import your old Word templates with special paragraph styles.If you're moving from Word to Pages '08, there's no reason your custom Word

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