iWork '09: The Missing Manual

About This Book

Despite the many improvements in software over the years, one feature has grown consistently worse: documentation. When you purchase most software programs these days, you don’t get a single page of printed instructions. To learn about the hundreds of features in a program, you’re expected to use online help, or download a manual from the company’s website. (Apple offers PDF guides to all of the iWork programs; you can find them at http://support.apple.com/manuals/#iwork.)

But even if you’re comfortable reading a help screen in one window as you try to work in another, something is still missing. At times, the terse electronic help screens assume you already understand the discussion at hand, and hurriedly skip over important topics that require an in-depth presentation. In addition, you don’t always get an objective evaluation of the program’s features. (Engineers often add technically sophisticated features to a program because they can, not because you need them.) You shouldn’t have to waste time learning features that don’t help you get your work done.

The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have been in the box. In this book’s pages, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for using every feature in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Because many features appear in all three programs, some features get in-depth treatment for one program but not another; when that’s the case, the book always points you to the page where you’ll find the full ...