Microsoft Word is no doubt the most used word processor out there. It is pretty much the de facto standard on PCs and also available on the Mac, although it is not nearly as popular on the Mac side.

One reason Word isn't so popular on the Mac is that we have more choices. Text Edit is a limited word processor that comes with every Mac and Pages (part of iWork '09) is an inexpensive add-on to your Mac that, while not as powerful as Word, will take care of most of your word processing needs.

From time to time, however, you will probably come across a Word file that you need to open. Most likely it will be from someone in the PC world that just assumes you can open it. Well you can. Even if you if don't own MS Word or even Pages.

The following is from a recent tip on the Apple Pro Tips website:

It’s easy to work with Microsoft Word files on your Mac, even if you don’t have Microsoft Word installed on your computer. TextEdit, your Mac’s built-in word processing program, can open MS Word files (which are often distinguished by a “.doc” or “.docx” suffix). Simply double-click the document icon. It will automatically open in TextEdit if that’s the only word-processing program on your computer.

Read the rest of the Pro Tip here

Note that TextEdit might not open a complicated Word file with the formatting perfectly intact, and while you can make simple edits, you can't expect TextEdit to do all the heavy lifting that Word can do. Nevertheless, TextEdit can be the perfect tool when you need to take a look inside a Word file.

Related Items: Text Edit | Microsoft Word

Resize your photo attachments Click to see a larger image

Your digital camera takes photo images at very high quality. With this high quality comes very large file sizes. iPhoto is able to handle these large files just fine, but what about when you want to email a copy of one of your photos?

Email is not meant for sending large files. Many email systems have a 2MB maximum on attachments and many of photos in my iPhoto library are in the 6 to 8MB range. If you try to attach photos that are too large, your email may bounce back to you or it may be delivered without the attachment.

Kindle

Today's tip isn't really a tip, but an interesting article that I ran across lately about "things" in terms of the computer world and how we collect and hold on to them. As I've been trying to get rid of some of my extra physical "things" on eBay recently and as I recently helped a Basics4Mac client who had a million electronic "things" on his hard drive with no real organization, this article really struck me.

Dragging a tab from the Tab Bar Click to see a larger image

In the past, I've published a few tricks on working with Tabs in Safari. This tip adds a a couple more tricks to the list.