inadequate footling TextEdit ! Despite throw a rich story — set out biography as Editin the Next ’s NextStep operating organization before becoming a feature of speech in Mac OS X — the app gets little regard . But it deserve our care . It ’s the skilful and simplest place to go in OS X for converting among textual matter formats and has feature that are still miss in Pages 5 after they disappeared in the bump up from Pages 4 ( ’ 09 ) .
TextEdit evolve from the original NextStep Edit program .
TextEdit seems like a homely little app . When launched , it does n’t present a listing of template and folderol . Rather , its dialog box lets you unfold a document or create a young one . Click Create Document , and you ’re presented with a stripped - down sieve . It looks true to its origins , like something from the 1990s .
I ’ve turned to TextEdit dozens of times of late , and I ’ve referred readers , booster , and family to it when Pages 5 does n’t cut it for their need . Here are a few fundamental examples of where TextEdit helps .
Formatted text is its native language
While Microsoft ’s Logos - swear out formats , .doc ( pre-2007 ) and .docx ( Good Book 2007 and later ) , are jolly world-wide at this point , there ’s often a mismatch between formats with which you ’re presented to open or save as and those you need , especially if you ’re using Pages , OpenOffice , or Word as the hub through which data passes .
TextEdit can open up Word files ( the old .doc and newer - but - now - quite - former .docx formats ) , Open Document .odt files ( from OpenOffice and other programs ) , RTF , and plain text filing cabinet . It also handles HTML , which can be displayed either as rich text with embedded data format and tie-in or , by changing an item in TextEdit preference , as tender hypertext markup language . ( RTF files can also be edited in their raw format , but this is much less typical and utile that you ’ll involve accession to their implicit in code . )
It supports Safari ’s Web Archive format ( File > Save Asand selectWeb Archivefrom theFormatmenu ) , which preserves all the content on a web page , though when TextEdit open up it , it ’s not necessarily perfect at deliver the Thomas Nelson Page as it appears in the archetype . However , by including formatted and linked text along with icon , the data format makes it potential to take a page in a web web browser and in TextEdit extract its text edition or grow it into a word - processing file cabinet .
TextEdit has a huge array of single file export options .
I often use TextEdit as a converter , too , because not only can it spread out all of those formats , it can save files out as a wide variety . ( prevail down the choice winder while selecting theFilemenu to see and selectedSave As , which replaces the defaultDuplicatemenu detail . )
Rich Text Document ( RTF , saved as .rtf )
Rich Text Document with Attachments ( .rtfd ) create a parcel with an RTF Indian file and all the cite images . This is often a great way to take a document with embed images and instead of copying and glue each persona severally , created fundamentally an export directory with every persona contained . ( To see the images , you right - snap the .rtfd file , and select Show Package Contents . )
Web page ( .html )
Web Archive Document ( .webarchive ) , discuss above
And a range of Son - work on formats : OpenDocument Text ( .odt ) and three Good Book formats : .doc , .xml , and .docx . TextEdit identifies these as Word 97 , Word 2003 , and Word 2007 formats , respectively . The .doc data formatting remains the service line for a mickle of older software package .
Search and you shall re-find
Many choices Apple made in creating Pages 5 have leave users and this writer baffled , but none more so than the remotion of advanced search and put back options . Search and replace is one of the best parts of Logos processing after actual typewriting and spellchecking , as it allows you to find job or matches throughout and optionally fix them . If you misspell a word of honor systematically ( or even inconsistently ) , you could incur all its iteration and replace them with the right version . Or you may match if you ’ve overuse a term .
The Pages 5 find lineament have little sophistication , but you may turn to TextEdit when you need more advanced options . store your Pages 5 file as a .docx single file ( File > Export As > Wordwith default option setting ) to best preserve all its formatting , then open it in TextEdit . ( Yes , it ’s more than a little peculiar that Apple ’s schoolbook public utility company can handle Microsoft and Open Document formatting , but not its own Pages ’ file , whether Pages ’ 09 / version 4 or Pages 5 . )
In TextEdit , press Command - F ( Edit > discover > notice ) , and a search battleground opens at the top of the windowpane for quick search . As you type , a count appears at the right of the plain for the number of couple . Check the Replace box and now you could swap in results , too ( or selectEdit > regain > Find and supervene upon , or press Command - Option - F ) . An funnily dividedReplaceandAllconjoined push corresponds to “ substitute just the next match ” and “ supervene upon all matches in the file . ”
snap the magnifying glass image , and a drop - down carte offer basic options ( like ignore fount and full Christian Bible ) found in Pages , but also lets you select whether a pattern is at the scratch of a Scripture — like “ cardinal ” finding both “ keystroke ” and “ keyboard ” .
ClickInsert Pattern , and you get to the good stuff , where you could find inconspicuous characters like lozenge , paragraph breaks ( returns ) , line breaks ( Shift - takings ) , and page breaks , as well as wildcards . TextEdit can also parse and recognize email addresses , URLs , and phone numeral .
Insert Pattern allows more powerful searches in TextEdit than Pages 5 .
The nifty part that ’s hidden at first is that you’re able to also use patterns in replace , although ace define in the Insert Patterns pop - up . So let ’s say you want to find all email address in a written document that are follow by a comma and a blank , then substitute them with the savoir-faire followed by a paragraph return .
When you clickAll , all match are replaced in the written document , keep up the e-mail address in each case . This is a limited flesh of formula - matching permutation , something receive in more forward-looking and varied translation in Word , BBEdit , and OpenOffice .
Converting from Markdown’s HTML output into an editable word-processing file
I often write inMarkdown , an expressed textual matter - format language that combines human legibility with parse ( in content - management systems , blogs , native package , and elsewhere ) to let you tag softly and then run through a parser that spit out nicely made HTML . However , the itinerary from Markdown to rich textual matter or .doc while retaining text format , integrate images , and keeping hyperlink participating is often rocky .
TextEdit eased that path for me , and you ’ve get two way to make consumption of it .
I could open a Markdown - export hypertext markup language page from within a web web browser window with images and all and glue into Pages 4 , which appropriately take rich - text pasting between apps , then export that document to RTF ( holding down Option , selectFile > Save As ) . ( Pages 5 does n’t offer RTF export . ) That RTF file can be open in TextEdit and export as a Word .doc or .docx .
you could also work from the HTML remnant , if you ’re not trying to incorporate images , and load an HTML file in TextEdit , which renders it into fat text while continue format and radio link . It does n’t open up reference files . This can then be export as .doc or .docx , which can be opened in Pages 4 or 5 .
In either case , you wind up with an editable word - processing document with everything or nearly everything entire .
Pages 5 final form
While TextEdit is a stop gap for a fate of routine purposes , Pages continues to evolve . Apple overgorge more than one would expect in underage releases in Pages 5.5 and 5.6 ( seeour critique of 5.6 ) , mend long - lost functionality . We can only hope that Pages 5.7 or , could we even stargaze , Pages 6 would bring the power of TextEdit back into Apple ’s flagship tidings processor .
