Creating Live Links in Documents

Sometimes it’s useful to create a hypertext link within your documents. You might, for example, make a link that automatically opens a Safari web page when clicked, or one that generates a pre-addressed email message.

Here’s how to create a link in TextEdit, your Mac’s word processing program: First, select the text you’d like to use as your link. Next, go to the Format menu and select Text, then Link. In the pop-up that appears, type the URL you’d like to link to. (Your linking text needn’t be a URL itself. For example, you could link to the same location either by typing: “Get more info at www.apple.com,” or “Get more Apple info here.” Press OK, and you’ve got your link.

You can generate an email just as easily. In the Link destination field, type “mailto:” followed by the email address, with no spaces, like so: mailto:info@apple.com.

TextEdit boasts a new feature in Leopard: Smart Links, which automatically creates links from email addresses and URLs as soon as you type them. To activate it, select Preferences from the TextEdit menu, make sure the New Document tab is selected, and check the Smart Links box in the lower right corner. Now Leopard will automatically generate a link in TextEdit each time you type a URL or email address. (You may need to restart TextEdit to enable this change.)

Leopard also lets you create live links in Mail. First, highlight your linking text. From the Edit menu, select Link, then Add… and enter the desired web address in the popup.

In Pages, the advanced word processing program included in the iWork ’08 package, there’s an extra layer of sophistication: You can forge links by selecting Hyperlink from the Insert menu, or create them via the Inspector window. You can also create bookmarks that link to other locations within a multi-page document, or generate email with the subject field already filled in.