how to

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Organizing Mail Before Forwarding or Replying

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Here David Passell outlines a technique for organizing mail, using the Thread feature in Mail.

1. Under View drop down check 'Organize by Thread.'Also click on From, To, Subject, Date Received (either latest last--arrow down, or latest first--arrow up) as desired

2.  Highlight all the Email messages in a thread. (or other subject of interest)

3  Do a copy (CMD-C)

4.  Open a New Message in Email

5.  Do a paste (CMD-V) of what is copied.

6.  On the message, do a SAVE, then CLOSE. I am asked if I want to save as a draft, and I say yes.

7.  Find it in Drafts, open it, and do desired editing. (suggest removing all the header except sender and recipient, and all the footer text. Also remove the duplicates of previous messages.

8.  Enter - To: desired recipient (can be yourself), any Cc: or Bcc: Subject:

9.  Send the message.

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How to Organize Email

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Email needs to be organized; otherwise that list in Mail can be a mess!  David Passell explains his system. "Here is a 'trick' that works for me in sorting out all the various messages and messages within messages. If you have 'Organize by thread' turned on, just select all messages in the thread, do a copy, then paste into a new message. You don't even have to send it to anybody; then you can read/print and digest it. It will be in the 'drafts' mailbox. This may help in tracking the train of discussion.

"It would help to have a consistent 'protocol' for sending/replying to messages.

(1) Some repeat all that has gone before, others extract things to answer, some don't repeat any of the previous message (like me).

(2) In the Cc: for both originals and replies -- some repeat the list of all addressees, some may use "undisclosed recipients" (not sure who may be a party to the replies), some only reply to the originator of the message. Nobody but the President or Secretary should send a message to all members of PMUG.

(3) If an individual receives a message that should be of interest to the board the message should be repeated, or it can be forwarded. If the message is already addressed to the board probably it does not have to be repeated.

(4) Since replies to a message always have as a subject Re: I always add to this in parenthesis (main point of reply). That way there aren't multiple messages with the same subject each of which has to be examined."

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Make Your Own WiFi Hotspot

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Here's a short video from CNET on how to turn your Mac or PC into a WiFi hotspot. Jim Hamm explains, "This can be useful if, say, you're traveling and in a hotel room with one ethernet connection and two computers. Instead of arguing as to who gets the ethernet first, just remember this tip. This has happened several times to Zee and I (not the arguing, just the circumstance. She gets the ethernet first......) I sure could have used this tip then.

"I also wonder if this wouldn't be a convenient way to transfer documents from one computer to another? For example, I occasionally want to move a document--say, an email or picture--from one of my Macs to the other. What I've been doing is just emailing it to myself. I don't subscribe to MobileMe, and I haven't tried Google Docs or DropBox yet either. This just might work."

Making It Easier to Find

"Let's say your Internet browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera) is set to full screen mode," so begins the latest from John Carter. He goes on, "You have been browsing in the PMUG website. You decide you want to check out the latest news in the Newsletter. When you click on the Newsletter button in the navigation bar at the top of the window, the PMUG website you were looking at is seemingly replaced with the Newsletter page.

"Now you want to get back to the PMUG site. Do you go to the address bar and enter in the PMUG URL? No! Do you quit the browser and start all over again? No! The PMUG website page is still open and hiding behind the Newsletter page. All you need to do is close the window with the Newsletter (Cmd-W) and the PMUG website page is revealed.

"If you are using Firefox, Opera, or Chrome, you may have your preferences set up to open a link in a new tab in the current window instead of opening a new window. Using Cmd-W closes the tab with the page that is being displayed in the window and reveals the page in the previous tab.

"So how many browser windows do you have open at one time? Clicking on Window in the menu bar will show you: (Chrome browser example in Snow Leopard) The check mark identifies the current window. All other entries in that section (at the bottom) are more open browser windows. Clicking on one of them displays that window.

(Chrome browser example in Snow Leopard)

"Another way to identify open windows is to right click (Ctrl-click) on the browser icon in the dock. The pop-up menu shows the open windows in the top section of that menu:

(Chrome browser example in Snow Leopard)

"If you have multiple tabs open to different web pages in only one browser window, you will see only one window in the above two examples with the name of the page in the current tab."

Thanks, John, for more helpful information.
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Sneaky Cookies You Might Not Have Seen

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Flash “cookies” can be up to 100 kb. They never expire, will never be deleted automatically, and by default they don’t have to ask your permission to save all this data. There’s no easy way to delete them yourself, your browsers are not aware that they exist, so clearing Cookies and History doesn’t help. Adobe has hidden the settings in a Flash app deep in their website. Got your attention, so far?

Also, did you know you can set privacy settings for access to your camera and/or microphone on your computer? The Maintain Blog alerted me to check out Adobe’s Website Storage Panel. The page that comes up has the information from your computer already listed. You can view and make changes in Storage, Security Settings, Global Notifications Settings, and more. Reassuringly, it says, “Adobe has no access to this list or to any information that the websites may have stored on your computer.  (Double click on this illustration to enlarge.)

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Safety in Backups

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Here's a lengthy report from John Carter, but it's worth your time to read it.  From here on we're quoting John. 

Scenario: You've had your Mac now for 2+ years and everything seems to be running just fine. Suddenly, without warning, you can no longer boot up the system. What happened?

The hard drive just failed!!! Well, maybe something else, but let's say it was the hard drive.

What's the best recovery method? Well, to get you started right away it would be nice if you could simply continue to use your computer until you have the time and the money to get it fixed. That can be done if you have an external drive ready to plug in and boot from.

To prepare an external drive as an alternate boot source, you need an external hard drive of the same size as your internal hard drive (use Get Info on Macintosh HD and read the Capacity). The external hard drive can have any configuration of inputs; USB 2.0 is the most common, but Firewire 400 is better, and Firewire 800 is best. When USB 3.0 is available for the Mac, that is even better. However, the price increases with each better interface, so it is quite all right to use USB 2.0 for this emergency external hard drive. Don't worry if the external drive doesn't say it is for a Mac, because it will be reformatted when you create the boot drive next.

The next thing you need is SuperDuper! for Mac. Download it from here. You can use SuperDuper! for free as long as you don't attempt to use any of the advanced features, and you won't need them for creating an emergency boot drive.

When the USB external drive is connected, launch SuperDuper!.

 (Double click to enlarge the illustration.) 
Notice in the image above that the Copy field points to the Macintosh HD (your internal drive) and in the To field you click on the double arrow and select the external drive you plugged in.

Next comes the easy part. Click on "Copy Now," take the defaults for any prompts that follow, and go to bed. In the morning, you may discover an error message on your screen that says, "You have been logged out..." blah, blah, blah. Just ignore that message. What you need to know at this point is that you should now be running off of the external drive and NOT off of the internal drive. This is simply a confirmation that creating the external boot drive actually worked!

To get back to working off of the internal drive, open System Preferences and click on "Startup Disk." The external drive you are running on should be highlighted. If it isn't, something went wrong with the copy process. (I shouldn't scare you like that. But if this did happen, you should still be running off of the internal drive and you should then call for help to figure out what to do next.) To boot up off the Internal drive, click on the icon identifying "Mac OS X < ... > on Macintosh HD," then click on the Restart button. When the Mac starts up again, eject the external hard drive and put it away for emergencies.

You're not done. If you ever do need to use the external boot drive, remember that the only applications, updates, and files in it are the ones at the time you created the boot drive. Maybe once in a while you might want to do this all over again? Not really. If you were also smart enough to maintain a Time Machine backup, you only need to update the boot drive from the latest Time Machine backup entry. Now you're back in business right where you left off, and maybe with just a few lost minutes (the Time Machine performs a backup every half hour). When time and money permit, take your Mac to your repair center and have them install a new drive. Be sure to also give them the boot drive you created so they can restore it to the new internal drive.

Remember, failure to protect your work with adequate backups is a down payment on future upsets.

When you are ready to purchase a suitable boot drive, do a Google/Yahoo search on the Internet for "external hard drivegb" (fill in the size - without the < and >) and consider one of the compact (thin) drives from Seagate, Iomega, Western Digital, or LaCie - because small is cute.

A NOTE ABOUT TIME MACHINE.

A recommended external drive to use with Time Machine depends on how much of your internal drive is being used and how much you expect to fill it in the next year or two (before it crashes). The size should be at least three times larger than what you expect to be using in your internal drive. Let me explain why. The larger it is, the farther back in time you can go to retrieve a lost file. For example, a 1.5TB drive used to backup a 500GB internal drive that contains 300GB of data will store backups for about the last three or four months. If your internal drive is 500GB and you're using less than 100GB, then a 500GB external drive might be adequate for short-term recovery. However, it is highly recommended that the drive has a Firewire 800 input so that performing a backup is performed in the quickest time possible. That being said, a USB 2.0 drive will work if saving an extra $50 means more. At least do a search for "external hard drive firewire 800" and look for bargains.

There's a bright side to every catastrophe. If your hard drive does fail, it could be a good excuse to buy the newest computer. You really don't need to hang onto years of photos and email anyway, right?

How to Right Click

"Some things are worth repeating," says John Carter,  "so here is an excerpt from Mac OSX Snow Leopard, the missing manual."

How to Right-Click

Every Windows computer comes with a two-button mouse. The left button clicks normally; the right button summons a shortcut menu containing commands for whatever you clicked. The Mac has shortcut menus, too, of course, but they’re not quite as necessary as they are in Windows, where the shortcut menu is often the only place you’ll find a certain command.

So when you’re running Windows on your Mac, how are you supposed to right-click?

Well, you could get yourself a two-button mouse, of course. It works fine on a Mac (in Windows or in Mac OS X). In fact, most desktop Macs sold since 2006 come with a two-button mouse, called the Mighty Mouse. It doesn’t appear to have two buttons, but you can actually click two different spots on its sloping far side. See page 340 for instructions on turning this feature on. The Mighty Mouse works fine for right-clicking in Windows.

If you have a recent Mac laptop, you can trigger a right-click using a sneaky trick: Put two fingertips on the trackpad, and then click the button. (That’s an option you can turn on or off in the Trackpad panel of System Preferences.)

Alternatively, if that’s too much to learn, just highlight whatever you want to right-click and then press Shift-F10.

If you’re stuck with a one-button Mac mouse, and none of these options works for you, use the Apple Mouse Utility program for Windows. (You can download it from this book’s “Missing CD” page at www.missingmanuals.com.) It lets you Control-click to simulate a right-click while you’re running Windows."

Safari - Adobe Reader Problem Solved

Trying to open a Review on our PMUG site  David Passell got only a dark grey screen.  He describes the problem and solution here. He was running Safari Browser (version 4.0.5) running under Snow Leopard on his Mac Mini.  He had previously tried to open the Review with Firefox and "with a minor annoyance it displayed very well." The solution he found at this link.  He had to set Safari to run in 32 bit mode, and he found that by default, the Safari browser runs in 64 bit mode, which is incompatible with Adobe Reader.

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Edit Your Google Calendar From iCal

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Art Gorski passes along helpful information, "Apple's iCal has long had the ability to subscribe to publicly shared Google Calendars, allowing you to view these calendars in iCal. This still required the owner to login to Google to edit these calendars. The Snow Leopard version of iCal has added the ability to sync with Google Calendars, allowing the owner to edit these calendars in iCal and having the changes automatically sent to the Google Calendar. To do this, select the menu iCal > Preferences and click on the Accounts tab. Next, click on the '+' button at the bottom of the window to add a new account. Enter your Google Email address and password credentials, select 'Google' from the pulldown menu, and click the Create button. Under the 'Delegation' tab you can specify which of your Google calendars you want to appear in iCal."

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Mac Fonts

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"Ever wondered what your Mac fonts would look like when they're viewed with different system and browser combinations?" John Carter asks.  Then he passes along some suggestions:  "Check out the list of common fonts to (almost) all versions of Windows & Mac equivalents here, then scroll down on that page to see the contributions by others that show images of what the fonts look like on different platforms and browsers. This proves that what you see is not always what others get.

John discovered that Courier New Regular and Courier New Bold were not installed on his Mac, so he had to scrounge around for them. If you need those fonts (Tax Cut requires them), send John a message and he'll fix you up.

"Check out what fonts you have with the application 'Font Book.' You'll even see a sample of what the font looks like. There's a chance that you have duplicate fonts or corrupt fonts on your Mac that you don't know about. Use Font Book to run a validation on all your fonts, find and disable the duplicates, find and delete the corrupt fonts. You may need to replace the corrupt fonts if you can find a source for them (maybe on your installation disc).

"Fonts are installed in three places on the Mac: /System/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, and ~/Library/Fonts (the ~ represents your home folder). Your home path location is for fonts that are unique to you (not seen by other logins on the Mac); this is where duplicate fonts might be found."

Re: Ways to Find It

John Carter to the rescue! He points out some important factors in "Ways to Find It," which was posted earlier today. (Scroll down to find this earlier posting.)
          "Please be careful when using Search to find images (especially when using the 'All images' button under 'Search For' in the left panel of Finder). The Search For  > All images will show results for all images in the iPhoto Library as well as images contained within application resources, which could number in the thousands. The result is a bit confusing as you might think there are images on your system that you did not put there or that there are duplicate images. You do NOT want to touch those images.
          "To identify the path where the image is located, look carefully at the bottom of the Finder. The path will look something like this:

"Or, it might look like this:

"In the latter case, you need to hover over each path element to see what it is.
"So please pay attention to the path and ignore anything that is part of iPhoto Library or an application."

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Ways to Find It

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(If you missed PMUG meeting on 3-20 this is one of the handouts)

Trying to find something you wrote or something you filed? Several simple solutions are at your side, just see which applies for your particular needs.

When you click on Finder in your Dock notice that under Devices and Places there’s a triangle next to Search For. Click under Today, Yesterday, or Past Week.

When the window comes up notice that the tool bar gives 4 choices for View. First is by Icons.

The second choice is List view. Here you can click Date Modified and things arrange from first to last, or last to first date. Click on Name and they come up in alphabetical order, either A to Z or Z to A.

The third view shows Columns and expands to the right side as you open something from one folder to another. Note the two short lines. Double click to expand the width of the open column.

The fourth choice of View opens Cover Flow. Try it out and see what comes up!

Then click on Action and note your options here. Could be useful, yes?

Go to the menu bar at the top of your screen. Under File find Label. There are 7 colors and X which reverts back to no color at all. You could assign a certain color for documents or a folders. Here you invent a system to help find things.

You can also do Command + space bar to quickly open the Spotlight for Search. A few key words will help you automatically find that document, email, or folder you want.

To find a word inside a document do Command + F and type in the word. It will be highlighted throughout the document you have open.

With your Mac you can find things!

Copy & Paste Program

          Can a simple copy and paste operation be improved and made easier? David Passell thinks so.  He recommends a small, free program called Jumpcut.  As he describes it, "It can be useful when gathering subjects from a number of different sources, (e.g. googling a lot of related subjects).  Unlike Clipboard it will save selections through a shutdown and restart.  Experiment with it and see how you like it."
          Curiosity picking up here?  Take a look at the program in action on this YouTube video. And, here's the place to download Jumpcut.

David sends us a few precautions:
1. If you have a lot of extra items in the menu bar the scissors may not show up. Increase the screen resolution or remove the items. Or, better, just use its CTRL-OPT-V hot key to display the list transparently over a target document.
2. It will not cut/paste images. You will just see a blank space in the dropdown under the scissors.
3. You can only select one item at a time to paste.
4. The most recent item is at the top of the list.
5. The menu bar of an application in use (such as Word or Pages) may obscure the scissors icon. You will need to return to finder. Just click outside the application's window, then select the item to paste, then return to the application. Better still use the CTRL-OPT-V hot key to select the items you want to paste. It even provides reference numbers. The lowest is the last saved (Use the "sticky bezel" preference so it stays put.)
6. You can quit (only through the menu dropdown which also lets you set preferences ) if you want to cut and paste images or screen shots, then restart Jumpcut to continue with saving text items. For that reason you should put it in the dock. You will not see it anywhere else except the applications folder.
          David's word of encouragement, "This should interest a lot of members. Experiment with it and see how you like it."

Mac Makes It Easy

       "Learn Without Limits," so declares the email from Apple today. Tips and videos will tell how to organize your mail, straighten up your files, and lists resources  for business that will help you learn about networking, storage, security, collaboration, media creation, and more.
       Remember, to find a specific word on the page you're looking at do Command + F and type the word in the search box that comes up.

Clutter on the Desktop: 5 Solutions

Have you ever wondered how to unclutter your desktop when you have multiple applications running at the same time? John Carter to the rescue!

"Let's say you have Mail and Safari and Finder and iTunes and iChat and iPhoto all running at the same time. The iTunes application is on top and buried somewhere behind it is Mail. How to find the Mail app? Well, don't do it by closing down applications.

As you know, there are at least always three ways to accomplish the same thing on a Mac. (And John proceeds to give us FIVE ways!)

1. The simplest way to bring an open application to the front (from behind other apps) is to find the icon for that application in the Dock and click on it.

2. Another simple method is to press Function key 9. This spreads out all the applications in smaller images across the desktop. Select the one you want to be in front.

3. Using the mouse isn't always fun for me because I like to keep my hands on the keyboard, so holding down the Command key and tapping the Tab key brings up a row of icons across the middle of the screen. The first icon on the far left is the application that is currently on top. While holding down the Command key, continue tapping on the Tab key and each icon in the row will highlight in turn. When you get to the application you want to be on top, let go of the Command key. Pressing the Shift key with the Tab key selects the previous icon in the row (moving right to left instead of left to right). You can also simply select the desired icon with the mouse and when you release the Command key that application will pop to the front.

4. You can assign applications to always be displayed in its own separate desktop window using Spaces (for Leopard and Snow Leopard only). Spaces is also known as Virtual Desktop. This method gets a little more technical, but plenty of help is available using Mac Help (select Help in the Finder, then select Mac help, then enter 'spaces' in the search bar). With Spaces, you can assign iChat to Space 2, iTunes to Space 3, iPhoto to Space 4, and allow Mail, Safari and Finder to be in all spaces (Mail cannot be assigned to any one Space, it is always displayed in all Spaces). You can create as many Spaces as you like. Each Space can be activated (brought to the front, so to speak) by pressing the Control key and a number key that corresponds to the Space number, or by pressing the F8 key (you can assign this function to any function key) and selecting from the displayed miniature Spaces. This could be fun, and it's the preferred method I use for putting certain apps in their own Space.

5. Yet another way to keep your desktop uncluttered is to switch your Mac from the default Multi-application mode (where all applications are stacked on the screen) to Single-application mode (where you only see on the desktop the one application that you are working with). This requires using a Terminal and entering command lines. The complete instructions can be found here.

Do you know of another way to pop an application to the front? Send your suggestion to editor@pmug.us. "