Data Detectors

Here’s a cool step-saver, something no other operating system offers—a little something Apple likes to call data detectors.

In short, Mac programs like Mail and TextEdit can recognize commonly used bits of information that may appear in your text: a physical address, a phone number, a date and time, and so on. With one quick click, you can send that information into the appropriate program, like Calendar, Contacts, or your Web browser (for looking up an address on a map).

When a data detector detects a date and time, it can suggest an appointment on your calendar automatically. It even shows you the proposed new Calendar entry (in dotted lines), in context with all your existing appointments, so you’ll know whether to accept or decline the new appointment. If everything looks good, click Add to Calendar. Or, if Mail’s parsing of the appointment needs a little tweaking, click Edit; the box expands so you can edit the details.

Figure 5-7. When a data detector detects a date and time, it can suggest an appointment on your calendar automatically. It even shows you the proposed new Calendar entry (in dotted lines), in context with all your existing appointments, so you’ll know whether to accept or decline the new appointment. If everything looks good, click Add to Calendar. Or, if Mail’s parsing of the appointment needs a little tweaking, click Edit; the box expands so you can edit the details.

Here’s how it works: When you spot a name, address, date, or time, point to it without clicking. A dotted rectangle appears around it. Right-click inside the rectangle or click the at the right side.

A shortcut menu appears. Its contents vary depending on what you’re pointing to:

  • A mailing address. You can choose Show Address in Google Maps from the shortcut menu; your Web browser opens automatically and shows you that address on a Google map.

    Alternatively, you can choose Create New Contact (to add a Contacts entry for this address) or Add to Existing Contact (if the person is in your address book—just not the address). Like magic, a little editing box sprouts out of the data-detected rectangle, prefilled with the information from the message, so that you can approve it.

  • A date and time. When you click the , you get the amazing pop-up menu shown in Figure 5-7. It shows you the actual Calendar day view where Mavericks is proposing adding the appointment. The logic of this feature is overwhelming; after all, when someone emails you to ask if you’re free for drinks next Thursday at 10, what’s the first thing you usually want to do? Check your calendar, of course.

    Tip

    If, while working in Calendar, you ever forget where this event came from, double-click it. In the Info balloon, you’ll see a link that takes you right back to the original Mail message that started it all.

  • A phone number. As with mailing addresses, the shortcut menu here offers you things like Create New Contact and Add to Existing Contact. The third one, Large Type, is great when you want to call this person right now—it displays the phone number in huge type, filling your screen, so you can see it from across your mansion.

  • A flight number. When you highlight flight information (for example, “AA 152”), the data detector offers a Show Flight Information command. It opens the Flights widget of Dashboard so you can see the flight’s departure time, arrival time, and other details. It works only if the airline is represented as a two-letter code.

    GEM IN THE ROUGH: Styled Text

    When you copy text from, for example, Microsoft Word, and then paste it into another program, such as Mail, you may be pleasantly surprised to note that the formatting of that text—bold, italic, font (size, color, and so on)—appears intact in Mail. You’re witnessing one of the Mac’s most useful but underpublicized features: its handling of styled text on the Clipboard.

    Almost all Mac programs transfer the formatting along with the copied text. Every time you paste formatted text copied from one of these programs, the pasted material appears with the same typographical characteristics it had in the original program. Over time, this tiny timesaver spares us years’ worth of cumulative reformatting effort—yet another tiny favor the noble Macintosh does mankind.

  • A Web address. When you click the next to a URL (like www.nytimes.com), you get a pop-up balloon that contains the actual Web page! You get a quick look, without even having to leave your email message.

  • A package tracking number. When you send a package using a service like FedEx, UPS, or the U.S. Postal Service, you usually get a confirmation email. A data detector can recognize such numbers and, when you click the , offer you a Track Shipment command. Choosing it displays a pop-up window right there at your cursor, showing the courier company’s tracking page for that package, and thereby letting you know exactly where your package is right now.

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