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The iWork suite of apps (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) play nice with each other -- for the most part. Objects such as shapes, text boxes and tables created in one app can easily be copied and pasted onto another and retain their styles. Even an image with an instant alpha filter applied will retain its transparency when pasted onto another iWork app. However, the iWork apps don't always play nice with each other when it comes to charts.

In particular, copying a chart created in Numbers and pasting it onto either a Keynote presentation or Pages document doesn't always bring the chart's legend with it respective to how it looked in Numbers. Sometimes, the legend may be misaligned, and sometimes it may even show up on a completely different page in the document.

To address this annoyance, just highlight all of the elements (the entire chart and the legend, or anything else you want retained) of the chart that you'd like to copy. Then click on Numbers "Arrange" menu and select "Group" (or hit Command-Option-G). Now, the legend of your chart retains its alignment when pasted onto either a Keynote presentation or a Pages document. To alter or undo this, just select "Ungroup" (Command-Option-Shift-G) from the same file menu.

In Apple's iWork suite, the "Paste and Match Style" or "Paste Style" options, as implied in their names, allow you to paste the style from one element onto another; or to paste an element into a document and to match the style of the document that it's getting pasted to. In many ways, they're the iWork equivalent of "format painter" found in Microsoft Office. And, in many ways, they're much better.

I recently noted the image-editing functionality of Preview.app, which can act as a "good enough" image editor for many that don't have access to Photoshop. While it's difficult to argue with the free price tag, Preview is not without its limitations. Fortunately, many of these limitations are unlocked if you happen to own Apple's iWork suite, which in its own right can serve as an image editor for the budget-minded.Read on to see how to use iWork in this unconventional way.

• The Keynote update primarily addresses issues with builds and performance.
• The Pages update primarily addresses issues with change tracking and performance.
• The Numbers update primarily addresses issues with tables and performance.