How to Create a Catalog With a MacBook Pro
If you've been assigned to create a catalog, either for personal or for business use, you need to build a document that includes categorized information. Your catalog may itemize household contents, products for sale, members of a club or any set of elements that needs or benefits from organized presentation. Even if you don't have access to the commercial software often used to build these kinds of documents, you're not out of luck. Your MacBook Pro includes built-in software you can use to create your catalog and share it with others.
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Instructions
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Launch the TextEdit application. In a new document, open the "Format" menu and choose "Wrap to Page." This setting enables you to add page breaks so you can paginate your document yourself rather than letting TextEdit break up your text flow arbitrarily.
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Move the margin guides and tab stops along the ruler at the top of your document window to establish, remove or change the default layout options. You can use left, centered, right or decimal tabs.
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Type in the text for your catalog. Add extra carriage returns between sections. To insert page breaks between individual items, open the "Edit" menu, navigate to its "Insert" submenu and choose "Page Break." Use the "Spacing" drop-down menu at the top of your document window to choose single- or double-spaced text, or set your own spacing values with the "Other" option. Align your text left, centered, justified or flush right using the buttons at the top of the document window.
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Press "Cmd-T" to bring up the floating Fonts panel. If you want to set your entire document in different sizes and styles of the same font, press "Cmd-A" to select everything you've typed, and set the Family and Typeface to your preference. Set the Size to the point size you'll use for most of your catalog. Click on the "Text Color" button at the top of the Fonts panel to bring up the floating "Colors" panel so you can set featured elements in colors other than the default black. You also can click on the "Text Shadow" button to add drop shadows to selected text, and control shadow opacity, blur, offset and angle using the controls in the document window.
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Select individual categories of information and use the Size settings in the Font dialog box to make them larger on headlines and featured information, or smaller on footnotes, disclaimers, copyright notices and other subsidiary information. Use the Colors panel to draw the reader's eye to important words or sentences.
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Use TextEdit's tables to set up chunks of information that include identifiers and values. Select your text and open the "Format" menu to reach its "Text" submenu and the "Table" option. Once your section of text becomes a table, you can use drag and drop to move information between cells by selecting words or phrases and dragging them where you want them to appear. The floating Table panel includes options to set the colors of your cell backgrounds and borders.
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Use the "Lists" drop-down menu at the top of your document window to add bullets and numbering to text that needs this type of formatting. You can choose from a range of bullet styles, numbering formats and outlining options, or choose "Other" to create your own.
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Save your catalog in Rich Text or Microsoft Word format. Print your project to your desktop or networked printer, or output it in PDF form to share with others.
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Tips & Warnings
Unlike Microsoft Word, TextEdit doesn't place tab-delimited text into individual table cells when you turn a range of text into a table.
Highlight sections of your document and use Text to Speech to let your MacBook Pro read your content to you for editing review.
Turn on hyphenation in the Format menu to allow TextEdit to break words at syllable boundaries.
Proofread your catalog before you distribute it.
Save a copy of your file in a backup location.
References
Resources
- Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual; David Pogue
- Photo Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
