Downloads Archive from K. Komando

From the Kim Komando website here is her downloads archive as recommended by David Passell.

He notes, "Check out the list of links to the right. On the lists summoned by any category, she has tagged, with appropriate symbols, which freebies are Windows and which are Mac. There is some fine print. The freebies may only be for a week or so, or on a trial basis. However for a collection it looks pretty promising.   Regards, David
P.S.  I said to myself I would stop browsing at 10:00 a.m. and here it is 10:17. WWW truly means World Wide Waster of Time:)"

I Inserted a Blank DVD. Now What?

Good question, David Crooks.  We'll follow John Carter's directions and view his screen shots to see how easy it is to do.



David asks, "I bought some DVD_RW on which to record data I want to save forever.  I inserted the DVD, and it did not appear on my screen.  What do you suggest?" 


"Good question," begins John.  And here for all of us to benefit from, are John's directions: 

Your preferences for what to do with a blank DVD or CD are probably not set to do what you would expect should happen.

Here's what I get when I insert a blank DVD+RDL: (the type of DVD does not matter)
To set up what action to take place when you insert a blank DVD or CD, click on the Apple icon, click on System Preferences, then click on the "CDs & DVDs" icon:
You should see this:

The top two options are set on my machine as you see them there. Here are the options:

Your machine might have it set to "Ignore" which is why you didn't see anything after inserting the blank DVD.

I you don't see any place to click on to eject that blank DVD, first launch Disk Utility (you do this by clicking on the Spotlight and typing in "Disk Utility."
Notice that without moving the mouse, the Top Hit has highlighted the application. All you need to do is  press Enter or Return to launch the application.

You should see something like this in the left side of the window:
I have my DVD drive highlighted. On the right side of the window is this:
Click on the Eject button.

After setting your preferences for what action to take when you insert a blank DVD or CD, you should then be able to work with the DVD or CD the way you want to.
Take care at this point! If you selected to open Finder so you could copy files to the DVD or CD, you might not think to look in the Places section of the Finder to see where it put a link to access that DVD or CD:  

So now all you need to do is drag files/folders into that location. Nothing is actually written to the DVD or CD yet. That only happens when you eject the DVD or CD. Notice the grey and yellow icon on the left? You click on that when you're ready to burn the contents of that folder onto the DVD or CD. And yes, you can change the title of the folder (Rename) and that name will be the title of the DVD or CD.
If you don't want to burn the DVD or CD just yet, leave it there until you have everything in this folder. And alternative is to first prepare a new folder with the contents of what you want to burn to a DVD or CD, then insert a blank, then copy the contents of the prepared folder to the Untitled DVD folder.

You can always back out and not do anything by ejecting the DVD or CD using Disk Utility, even if you have copied stuff to the Untitled DVD folder.  Doing so does NOT remove (delete) the Untitled DVD folder from the Finder sidebar. You have to move that folder to the Trash by going to your Desktop (where it lives), right click (control click) to open the options menu, and select "Move to Trash." As we say in baseball, no hits, no runs, no errors.

,

Making Booklets is Easy to Do

,

Going to the valley for Auntie's 90th birthday inspires me to tell you how bluesquirrel's ClickBook made a nice surprise for her and family and friends.  She gave me handwritten pages of remembrances of growing up with Mama, and I made booklets.  It's so easy to design and print them myself.

ClickBook works with PDF Workflow and automatically rotates, reduces and realigns pages into the correct order to create double-sided booklets.  I've used this program for 5 years, and besides family memories booklets I've compiled 33 booklets of my own inspirational writing, poetry, articles, and stories.  Adding photos are a cinch.

CableOne and Mac Mail

"I have been getting questions from people new to the Mac on how to set up Mac Mail to send and receive messages using CableOne," John Carter tells us.  Here he gives us step by step and illustrated directions.

Here's John's directions,  (you have to be connected to the Internet):

1. Open Mac Mail
2. In the Menu Bar, click on Mail
3. Click on Preferences.
4. In the window that pops up, click on the Accounts tab.
5. In the bottom right of the window, click on the "+" sign to add a new account.
6. In the Add Account window, Enter your full name in the top field.
7. Enter your cableone.net email address in the second field.

8. Enter your cableone.net password in the last field.
9. Click the Continue button in the bottom right. You will then get a pop-up window that appears to be an error message:

10. Click on "Setup Manually"
11. In the next window you will be setting up the Incoming Mail Server:

12. Enter the information as shown above, except use your user name and password.
13. Click Continue
14. In the next window, just click Continue:

15. In the next window you will be setting up the Outgoing Mail Server:

16. Enter the information as shown above for the Outgoing Mail Server. The Description field can be anything you like that will identify that CableOne is being used as an outgoing mail server.
17. Click Continue.
18. The next window will again appear to be an error message:

19. Click on "Setup Manually."
20. In the next window, just click Continue:

21. A summary of what you have done so far is shown next:

22. Click on the Create button to finish.
23. When you return to the Accounts page you should see this:

24. Please be sure to check the box "Use only this server" unless you have other email accounts that you prefer to use.
25. Notice that I have several other email accounts
26. Click on the "Mailbox Behaviors" and the "Advanced" tabs and set up your mail preferences the way you like them. There is no "best" way.
27. Create a test message and send it to yourself. In the Mail window, click on Get Mail if the message does not come in right away. Messages are retrieved according to the time period you set up in the General tab of the Mail Preferences (Check for new messages).   # # #

Problem with iMac Detailed

An email making the rounds hit David Passell's inbox.  David wonders if anyone else with a iMac or MacBook with an ATI X1600 GPU is having these types of problems.  A list of links on Apple Forums discussing this situation is listed below, in the event you are concerned.

The problem is described by an Australian long-time Mac enthusiast: "I am a long-time Mac enthusiast who feels a bit more "down under" than usual. I have spoken to the Australian Apple Support regarding my white Intel iMac which has had issues with the graphics card/logic board since three months (!) out of factory warranty. I purchased the machine, which had been used very little, from a friend (a fellow Mac User Group member for many years) in February 2008. It was then two months out of warranty. When I realized he hadn't taken out Apple Care I called Apple and was told that to take out Apple Care it had to be done within the original 12 months warranty period. The machine was however as new with relatively few hours of operation and nothing more intensive than web browsing and emails so I thought I'd be alright.

"The very next month, thin horizontal multicolored lines started appearing sporadically on my screen. I called support who said my warranty had expired and there were no known issues with my model so I was on my own. I repaired permissions and scanned the disk for problems but short of some incorrect permissions on occasion no problem was found. Gradually the problem worsened and the computer would sometimes freeze and the screen change to a pattern of multicolored vertical lines.
In November 2008 I actually took a photo of the screen on such a freeze using my iPhone and I have done so also on another occasion. I have attached links to the pics. I have taken the iMac to my local service agent and they cleaned it and ran tests which failed to find a cause for the problems. They suggested it may be the graphics module which is part of the logic board and can't be replaced.
The problem has now become so bad that I have had to change the background to a plain color and and turn off screensavers and anything graphic intensive. I am now down to one or two freezes & reboots per day from four to five."     This email was sent by Mikael Lindstedt.

Links:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1516765&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1467276&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136365&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2181088
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1697470&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1974295&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2194641
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1878407&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2109263
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1726184&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2147082
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1609243&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10473645&#10473645
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2165038
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1974295
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1995151&start=0&tstart=0

Screen pics:
http://img200.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=attachmentpe.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/g/img0073hw.jpg/

Non-Apple links:
http://getsatisfaction.com/apple/topics/2006_imac_graphics_card_crash_freeze
http://torley.com/macbook-pro-with-ati-radeon-x1600-distorted-video-glitches
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/imacrecall/
http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/topic/114232-imac-lines-on-screen/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330060-263.html?tag=mncol
http://www.sfmslaw.com/pages/cases.php?id=779

New Site for Sharing Info

Always on the lookout for info, David Passell has signed up for the Beta release from O'Reilly Answers. Their slogan is "Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions." David has already submitted a posting under the Linux heading at Beta Forum which proclaims, "Share. Ask. Answer." Other PMUG members might find this a useful site, and some might have tips to submit there.

Postings in the new Forum cover a myriad of geeky subjects. David was describing how handy the ScreenShot feature of QuickTime 10 can be for recalling what he did. He wrote about his experience, sent it to O'Reilly Answers and was encouraged by Tim O'Reilly to set up an account and post it.  He says he suspects John Carter uses something like it in his dock description.

This latest version of QuickTime 10 (SnowLeopard, only) has a Screen Recording feature which allows him to easily review.  He can go back through the recording with speed up to 8X to see what he's done.

I asked David how he got involved with this Beta Forum.  Initially he wrote to tell how handy ScreenShot is for Floss Manuals. "Being a Mac user, the subject of 'Paths' was foreign to me.  When I was introduced to Linux I quickly got lost. Having an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) computer with a VNC (Virtual Networking Computing) server program I found I could go through the various paths and view them on a Mac.  There I could make screen shots and comments in MS Word, (Pages probably would have been better, but I'm cheap!)

"Unless I had a WebPage I would find it difficult to upload one to anybody.  I can stop, though, and get ScreenShots of something significant."

Perhaps you saw David's little green and white XO computer from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) at an earlier meeting.  He works through a VNC server program.

On his Mac David starts with a program called Chicken of the VNC. "When I enter the proper IP address for the server computer I see its screen on my Mac.  From there anything I do on the server computer shows on my Mac Mini.  I can do similar things between my Mac Mini and my other computers that are networked on my router."

His philosophy is "When I write manuals I always had the feeling that if I could understand it later, anybody could. Engineers and Programmers are probably the worst to write user manuals.  They are too close to the subject and fall victim to 'I know it, so everyone else should.'"

(All of this to say:  you will want to check out that O'Reilly Answers Beta Forum.)

Hard Drive Getting Full?

If your Mac hard drive is getting full John Carter has a solution.  Consider that you may be filling up one or more of the following folders:   Movies  --  Pictures -- Documents  --  Downloads
John walks us through the steps as follows . . . and we quote:

It is easy to recover a lot of space just by adding an external drive and moving the folders from the internal drive to the external drive, and then creating a symbolic link from the external drive folder back to the internal drive. This could work equally well even if you have a laptop. For laptops, I recommend the Western Digital Passport - whatever size suits you - because they are compact and carry well. An alternative would be to purchase a 3.5" Seagate or Maxtor drive and install it in a 3.5" external case, and this might be cheaper than a Passport drive of the same capacity.

Now for the detail.  To move a folder from one location to another, you could simply use Finder to drag the existing folder to an external drive. A preferred alternative (more reliable) would be to use a command line in a Terminal:

$ sudo ditto <source_folder/> <destination_folder/> 

Only the contents of the source folder are copied, including all subfolders. If the destination folder does not exist, it will be created, and the contents of the source folder are copied into the destination folder.

Example:

$ sudo ditto /Users/jcarter/Movies /VolumesMac1_HD2/Movies

Next, you need to delete the source folder and create a link from the destination folder to where the source folder was. This has to be done in a Terminal:

$ rm -rf /Users/jcarter/Movies
$ ln -s /Volumes/Mac1_HD2/Movies /Users/jcarter/Movies

The symbolic link (specified as symbolic by the -s option) /Users/jcarter/Movies is not a folder. It is a file that pretends to be a folder. When you look at it with the Finder you actually see the contents of /Volumes/Mac1_HD2/Movies. If you use a command in Terminal to look at it you will see:

$ ls /Users/jcarter/Movies
/Users/jcarter/Movies@

At this point, although not essential, you should log out and log back in. As far as the applications that access the Movies folder are concerned, the folder is still there.

The result is you have just recovered a lot of disc space on your internal drive.

Now, if you did not have the external drive attached and powered up and tried to access something in the Movies folder with, say, iMovie, iMovie will still work but you'll have to specify a new path to work in. Not a good idea, because then you'll have multiple locations for your movies.

If you moved "iPhoto Library" to an external hard drive and the drive was not attached or powered on, iPhoto will ask to you specify a new location for your photos. Again, this is a bad idea because the new location will override the old one and it will appear as though you can't access those old photos. Never fear. You can always tell iPhoto to look in any location for photos at the time you start up iPhoto by holding down the Option key when you launch iPhoto. That brings up the menu to specify the location to look in before bringing up the application. Just be sure you specify an actual iPhoto Library path.

After moving my iPhoto Library to an external drive, I looked at the available paths for iPhoto and discovered the following:

The default location points to the original path:

The next location points to another user login on the Mac:

And the last location points to the actual path on the external hard drive:

And, here John closes off with, "May your days be merry and bright."

Make it Easier to Read

Want to "zoom, zoom, zoom"? David Passell solves the problem of trying to read emails and text on web pages that are too small to read easily.  You can use Command and +  to enlarge the image up to a point, or Command and - to reduce it.  This, however, may hide a lot of the page.  David explains and includes screen shots to show how to use the Universal Access Feature in Preferences.



"The Universal Access Feature can help you. Go to Preferences > Universal Access and notice the features on the top menu, (Seeing, Hearing, Keyboard, Mouse.) You should select the Seeing item.

Now look at Zoom and check the On button. Click on Option and you have choices. You can play with them to see what works for you. Here is how mine is set and it works well for me.

Most of us have scroll mice or the mighty mouse. I have found the most handy way to use zoom is when I browse to a site with tiny print, or someone sends me an E-mail with very small print then I can do the following:

Hold down the CMD and OPT keys and then turn the scroll wheel . One direction zooms in on the screen, the other direction zooms out.

When you get to the size you want then you release the buttons. Then the scroll wheel works in the normal way to scroll up and down on the screen image. If you move the mouse, the screen moves under the mouse. Do this until you want to examine some other part. Here is what that small portion will look like.

You can move all over the screen at this magnification. Just move your mouse.

When you no longer need to zoom around press CMD, OPT [-]

The screen display will revert to its unmodified appearance, and the mouse will not move the screen. One of the options is to 'show preview rectangle when zoomed out.' This is like a target on the screen, I find it a confusing distracting, but here is what you will see if it is selected.

If you are zoomed out, then the rectangle will move over the screen with the mouse to show the area of the screen that the scrolling in does."   So try it, and see how it works for you.

Magic Mouse Review

Apple's new Magic Mouse clicks and swipes and scrolls.  Look at it here.   Jim and Zee Hamm bought the new mouse and want to share their experience.

Jim refers to a good review of Apple's new Magic Mouse. He explains, "I pretty much agree with the writer's comments. Zee and I bought and are using the new Magic Mouse.

"Here are some of my comments. One item he didn't mention, and which I miss, is the ability to push the scroll button--like on the Mighty Mouse--and open Expose for all windows. I used that feature a lot. The other item not available is to be able to squeeze the two side buttons--again, like on the Mighty Mouse--to open Dashboard. I got around these two shortcomings--to me, anyway--by assigning a 'hot corner' for Expose to the upper left corner of the screen. I've got used to this now, and it works quick. For Dashboard, which I don't open all that often anyway, I just click the icon in the Dock.

"I was concerned the low profile might be irksome or fatiguing, but neither of which have occurred, at least for Zee or me. The mouse is easy to hold, glides effortlessly, and I really like how easy it is to scroll with the Magic Mouse. This is probably its nicest feature.

"And I also like that there is no button to get clogged up, which happened occasionally with the Mighty Mouse. The two-fingured swipe to go back and forth on open windows within a website takes some getting used to, but is handy once one gets the knack of it. You have to let go of the mouse and gently swipe two fingers across the mouse.

"Comparing the two mouses, side by side, is somewhat comparable to comparing, say, a Chevy to a new Lexus. Both work, but the state-of-the-art features in a Lexus are the coming thing. (Have you seen the Lexus ads?) The Mighty Mouse is an electro/mechanical design; the new Magic Mouse is pure electronic.

"Both Zee and I are happy we made the switch."

Get Acquainted with BIG Numbers

This stretches the brain, but that’s the fun of something new. Heard of a yottabyte?
NSA is planning to store yottabytes of surveillance data in Utah. Quoting from CrunchGear (Nov. 1, 2009)

"There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB. Are you paranoid yet?"

Writer Devin Coldewey talks about an interesting article in the current New York Review of books, detailing the history of the National Security Agency and what the future holds. Take a look; there are 103 comments posted.

Synchronize Your Address Book with Google/Yahoo/MobileMe

Here's an idea:  synchronize your Address Book with Google/Yahoo/Mobile Me.  Why, you ask?  I asked that, too.  Here John Carter explains the why and how:
"There is no way to export the Mac Address Book so that it can then be imported into something like Google Mail Contacts or Yahoo Mail Contacts, but you can synchronize between your Mac Address Book and Google, Yahoo, or your MobileMe accounts.

"It's easy to do, but there are complications. . . "

"Here's the sequence:
1. Open Address Book
2. Select Preferences
3. Select Accounts

"Check the accounts you want to synchronize with.
Select 'Configure' for each account. You will asked for the username and password for that account.
Nothing happens right away. In a short while you will get a pop-up that notifies you that one of those accounts is attempting to synchronize. There may be conflicts between the two accounts that you will have to correct, choosing which entry to accept (from the other account or from the Mac account).

"When you're all done, check both the external contact list and the Mac Address Book. There will be lots to do to make them look the same (this is the part that can be complicated). But once you've done this, synchronizing thereafter will be a breeze.

"Once you've got your contact list updated in Google or Yahoo, simply export the contact list to a CSV file. That file can be imported into any other application."

"But John," I asked,  "Does putting Google or Yahoo or MobileMe in any way compromise your security and/or the privacy of the names and info you have in your Address Book?"

"No."

Then I needed to know, "Will I want to, or need to do this at some time?  I have lived this far without having this synchronized."

John explains, "It's a personal choice. Sometimes I'm away from home. The only access I have to email is through Gmail, Yahoo, or my GoDaddy account. If I don't synchronize the address book with the Mac Address Book, I may not be able to send a note to someone I'm thinking of.

"With regards to my GoDaddy account, since there is no direct sync with that provider, I then need to export the address book from either Gmail or Yahoo and import it into GoDaddy. It has to be done this way because the Mac Address Book has no way to export the address book contents into a CSV formatted file. The exports from Gmail and Yahoo can be done to a CSV formatted file."   # # #

Using NUMBERS

Here's a tip John Carter has discovered regarding NUMBERS. He begins, "Let's say you have two DATE columns (formatted for dates). Let's call them Start and Finish.

"Now let's say you want to know the number of months between these dates, and you want the result in Integer format to a two decimal precision.

"The standard way of subtracting the two dates gives a result that looks like an Integer, but it is actually a DURATION format. You can't operate on a DURATION value in the same way that you can operate on an Integer and expect an Integer value, because what you get will still be in DURATION format.

John continues, "For instance, let's say that the Start value is 1/1/2009 and the Finish value is 10/1/2009. The difference (=Finish-Start) will be 273 days, and it will appear as 273d in the cell. The 'd' stands for days, not duration. Now if you want to find the number of months as an Integer you might think that just dividing by 30 (or by (364/12) to be a little more accurate) would give you the number of months in Integer format, but it doesn't. Look:

"The manner in which Months is displayed depends on how many places you want to show in the result (using the Inspector). But notice that the result appears to be 9 days, given by the '9d' value. This is actually supposed to be read as 9m, because it's months, not days, but Apple didn't think ahead on this one and didn't provide the Inspector with the ability to format a duration in months, and if we set the display for weeks, we get 1w 2d 0h. Well, fortunately that equates to 9d. Oh, what a mess! It's very awkward in this format to read properly, so let's change the value of Days to an Integer format.

"With Microsoft Excel, you could simply change the Days cell format to be an Integer and be done with it. NUMBERS doesn't allow changing the format of a DURATION in such a direct fashion.

In the Days cell where you are subtracting the two dates, e.g., "=Finish-Start", use the following formula instead:

=DUR2DAYS(Finish-Start)

This converts that value to an integer.

Then in the next column when you divide Days by (364/12), you get a real Integer instead of a duration that doesn't even look right.

John concludes, "We could have used DUR2DAYS() on the Months value. It will amount to the same Integer value."   ###

Internet Addresses Set for Change

Keeping up with the latest about the Internet, this one is a biggie.  David Passell forwards this article, describing the addition of non-Latin-script web addresses. It's called the biggest change in the way the Internet works since it was created 40 years ago. The first applications for IDNs (Internationalised DomainNames) will be accepted November 16, with the first up and running by "mid-2010."  More details follow:

The board of Icann voted at its annual meeting in Seoul to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese, and other scripts.  More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the Internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.  Plans for the IDNs were first approved in June 2008, with the testing of the system on-going for the last two years.

This article goes on to say that the move paves the way for the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) to be changed so it can recognize and translate non-Latin characters.

Icann was set up by the US government and founded in 1998 to oversee the development of the net.

Macintosh Apple Pie (the real thing)

Look at this!  When I say Apple, do you think "apple"?  When I say, "Macintosh," do you think, "apple"?

Jim Hamm says he's going to see if Zee will make him this pie. He wrote, so I wrote back that he could try to make it himself and let us know.  He responded with "I can't cook at all.  That's why I whine and plead like a real man to get Zee to cook a pie like this."
Here from SmallDog.com is the one you'll want if you like apple pie.

The link above takes you to the archives of every newsletter since August 2008.  Now here's the actual page link.

Actually, they call this "Grace's Vermont Apple Pie,"  by Grace Mayer


CRUST

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons very cold butter
  • Grated rind 1/2 lemon
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons ice water

Place the flour, salt, and sugar in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter into small bits and add to flour mixture. Using your fingers, cut in the butter until it has the texture of coarse cornmeal. Add the lemon rind. Separate the eggs and set the whites aside. Beat the yolks with the water and add to the mixture, stirring quickly with a fork.
Gather the dough into a ball and place in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.
FILLING

  • 8-12 McIntosh Apples
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1/2 cut brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Take one quarter of the dough and put it back in the refrigerator. The remaining piece will be the bottom crust. Roll out the crust between two pieces of wax paper. The crust should be as round as possible and should fit into the pie plate with the edges hanging over.


Carefully peel the wax paper off one side and lightly lay the paper back on. Flip the dough over and carefully peel the wax paper off this side. Place in the pie plate and carefully peel off the remaining paper. Fit the dough into the plate and cut off any extra from the edges.


Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pare the apples and cut them into thick slices. One apple should yield only about 8-10 slices. Place the sliced apples into the crust. Dot the top with the butter. Sprinkle the brown sugar, flower and cinnamon over the top. Set aside.


Roll out the remaining dough between two new pieces of wax paper. Make this piece as square as possible. Peel the paper off the bottom crust. Use a fork to flatten the edges.


Brush the top of the pie with the leftover egg white and sprinkle lightly with some sugar. Place in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes. Watch the pie for the last five minutes. It may need a little more or less time. depending on your oven. When it is evenly browned, remove and cool before slicing.


(No, we won't publish everyone's recipe in our PMUG news blog.  But, hey, this is Apple, and it is Macintosh!)

Keyboard Shortcuts with Apple Mail

Everybody likes to save time.  Jim Hamm begins by saying, "One tip not mentioned, which I use often is Command+N to open a new message box to send an email." He sends us this article of tips for Quickly Managing Mail.  (If you, like me, prefer to read black type on a white background instead of white type on black background do this: Control+Option+Command+8 and rest your eyes.)

Throughout the whole time of using Mac, often we will spend time on checking and managing our mail. I personally like the default mail application for Mac: Mail.app.

In this trick, I am going to share with you some keyboard shortcuts that come in handy when we're going to manage our mailboxes, quick navigate mailbox, and handle message.

Managing Mailboxes

You will use these shortcuts often. You should quickly burn these into your brain.

Cmd-Delete → Delete selected mailbox item(s)
Cmd-Shift-L → Mark selected items as "Flagged"
Cmd-Shift-J → Mark selected items as "Junk"
Cmd-Shift-Y → Add sender(s) of selected items to Address Book
Cmd-Shift-K → Select all related messages
Navigating Mailboxes

And you can always use keyboard shortcuts Cmd-1 ~ Cmd-8 for quick navigation to other mailboxes.

Handling Message

In the case of handling message, these keyboard shorcuts would be very useful:

Cmd-R → Reply
Cmd-Shift-R → Reply All
Cmd-Shift-F → Forward
Cmd-Shift-E → Redirect
Cmd-Shift-B → Bounce
Hope these shortcuts will help you in increasing your productivity.  # # #