iWork® '09 For Dummies®

Chapter 22. Ten Ways to Let iWork Do the Work for You

In This Chapter

• Finding and browsing the AppleScript Pages dictionary

• Counting tables on a Pages page

• Adding a table to a Pages document

• Retrieving properties for a Pages table

• Setting properties for a Pages table (version 1)

• Setting properties for a Pages table (version 2)

• Inserting images from a folder into Keynote

• Rotating and scaling images with Automator

• Using Automator with multiple files

• Looping around Automator

Are you pointing and clicking your way through the tasks at hand? With the Mac OS X automation tools, you can specify what you want to do and then have Mac OS X and apps such as the iWork apps carry out your wishes.

A wide variety of automation tools are available. Some construct scripts using scripting languages found not only in Mac OS X but also in other operating systems. Two of the most important Mac OS X–only tools are AppleScript and Automator. They're the jumping-off point for this chapter. After you see the basics of AppleScript and Automator, you find specific ways to use them to automate your iWork projects.

AppleScript's syntax is built into Mac OS X and many applications, including the iWork applications. There are two major components to AppleScript:

Letting iWork do your work

A host of timesaving features are built into the iWork apps. The most obvious are the built-in themes and templates. Instead of starting from a blank document, you can start from a document with built-in pages, sheets, and sections. You don't ...