OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Working with a Document's Content

When an application is active and a document window is on the screen, you can generally adjust its content.

Whether you are creating a new document or editing an existing one, you can add content to a document, move existing content around, and even move content from one document to another document.

Each application works with at least one content type, and many use their own content type. For example, Microsoft Word works with text, RTF, and Word document file types; Adobe Photoshop works with Photoshop, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and many more file types; iMovie works with MPEG-4 video and iMovie project file types; and so on. For in-depth details on working with just about every major application that runs on OS X, consult Wiley's excellent books on them.

Although applications work on a great range of documents and have many specific controls for them, there are standard techniques that work commonly across many applications, regardless of the type of data created and how it is managed by the application. Good examples are the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands. They are universal concepts used to shuffle content around in a document. For example, in Word, you use them to move blocks of text around a document (or to another document), and in Adobe Photoshop, you use them to move around parts of images. Additionally, many programs let you drag content from one part of a document to another—or by holding down the Option key, copy content from one spot ...