Occasionally a program will "hang" and you will not be able to quit out of it. In cases like this, you may need to force-quit the application or reboot the machine.

When you force-quit or reboot, there is a possibility that unsaved work will be lost. However, if you are using programs (like Microsoft Word) which have auto-save features, you should be able to recover most things.

To force-quit an application

1. Hold down the "option" and "command" keys and press "escape." (The command key has kind of a four-sided infinity sign and an apple on it.)

2. You should now be prompted with:
   

   Force "[application name]" to quit?
   Unsaved changes will be lost.
   

3. Click on "force quit" to quit the application.

To reboot the machine

1. Hold down the "control" and "command" keys and press "reset." (command is the "apple" key; reset is the button with a triangle on it, usually found in the upper-right corner of the Mac keyboard.)