Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

slightly random MacBook question

Oct 15, 2007 3:32AM PDT

Hi,
I'm a fairly recent PC to Mac switcher and there's something I can't figure out that's driving me crazy. I know that if I want to tab between several programs while I'm working I can do apple tab and it will let me switch rapidly between, say, word, firefox, and excel.

But what if I have TWO word docs (or excel workbooks, etc) open and I want to be able to go back and forth between, say the internet and both word docs? Is the only option to arrange the word docs on my desktop so that I can click on them individually? I'm finding that to be a little bit of a pain and wondering if there's a better way. (On a PC everything is on the bottom tab of the desktop so you can just click quickly on the "button" for that document).

Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
A slight mix up
Oct 19, 2007 11:59PM PDT

Apple + Tilde only works inside one application.

For example; if you have three word documents open at once, they would be overlapping each other. Like sheets of paper on a desk.
Holding down the Apple key and pressing the tilde key will change the order of the word documents on the desktop. It brings the next one to the top for each press of the tilde key.
There is a post about this further up the thread, you must have missed it.

With reference to the Apple + Tab combination. It does not bring up the Dock. What you see is a graphical representation of the applications that are actually running at the time. The Dock shows you all the applications that you have in the dock, regardless of whether they are running or not.

This functionality is also available in Windows.

P

- Collapse -
MS Office view switch
Oct 22, 2007 12:19AM PDT

Use Control + Tab to change the document/spreadsheet you want to look at within MS Word/Excel.

- Collapse -
Switching between open docs on a mac
Oct 22, 2007 7:56AM PDT

System pref> opens Dashboard and Expose >click on drop down box relating to what ever corner of the screen you want to activate the switch between docs> click on all windows> close

If you have several docs open at once all you have to do to move from one to the other is push the mouse into whatever corner you previously marked (above) and all the docs will open at once filling the screen. Simply click on the one you want - then to go back to the other move the mouse to the same corner and etc....

- Collapse -
That's still Expose
Oct 22, 2007 11:10AM PDT

only activated by Hot Corners and has been done to death here.

P

- Collapse -
Control + Tab in Word
Oct 22, 2007 11:08AM PDT

does nothing other than put in a tab on the document you are currently viewing.

Command (apple) + Tab switches between all the open Applications

Command (apple) + Tilde (~) switches between all the open Word, Excel or Powerpoint documents that are open.

P