iPad Tips

1. How to take a screenshot

If you want to capture an image of what’s on your screen, it’s as easy to do as it is on your PC. Simply press and hold down the Sleep/Wake button located on the right-hand side on the top of your iPad whilst simultaneously pressing the Home button and – hey presto! – your screenshot will be added to your camera roll.

2. Typing

Caps Lock: When you need to type all in upper case, you don’t want to hold down shift to capitalise every letter. But never fear – enabling the Caps Lock function is easy. Go to Settings – General – Keyboard to turn it on. From now on, whenever you wish to write in capitals, you need simply double-tap either of the shift buttons to switch Caps Lock on.

Punctuation: Trying to find certain punctuation marks such as speech marks and apostrophes may seem tricky on the iPad as they are located on a second virtual keyboard. However, there are shortcuts to them from your main keyboard. To get an apostrophe, just tap and then hold down the exclamation mark. For speech marks, apply the same action to the question mark.

Split the keyboard: Typing on the iPad can be a bit awkward when you have it in your hands. There is a slightly easier way, by opting to use a split keyboard. Place two fingers in the middle of your keyboard then move them apart and you get two smaller halves, one on either side of the screen.

Typing shortcuts: To save time and effort, you can set up shortcuts for words or phrases you use on a regular basis. Go to Settings – General – Keyboard. Here you can set up your own shortcuts, e.g. “yf” for “yours faithfully” and from now on the iPad will add the whole phrase when you type in the shortcut.

3. Find text

You may be familiar with the CTRL+F shortcut on your PC. Wouldn’t it be great if the iPad had a similar function to quickly search for words or phrases on a page. Well it has. Just type the text you are looking for into the search box at the top of your screen and you’ll see it says “On This Page” in the results. Tap on this and it will highlight all occurrences of that word or phrase.

4. Copy and paste

If you want to use text elsewhere, say, for instance, you wish to duplicate text in a document for use in an email, you can do this in a similar manner to what you would on a regular computer. Tap and hold on the text you want to copy. The iPad will highlight the word you have tapped on and you’ll see a bar appear with a blue circle at either end. To expand your selection, drag the bar from either side to highlight words for inclusion, then tap ‘Copy’. To paste the text into your intended destination, go to the app you wish to add it to, tap and hold and then hit ‘Paste’.