How To Change Safari’s Home Page
Would you like to change Safari’s Home Page? Apple typically sets Safari to open to this page on their own web site. You can easily configure Safari to show you any web page you’d like. Here’s how:
Read moreSoftware
The apps that run on your Mac or iPhone/iPad.
How to View RSS Feeds in Apple Mail
RSS is a convenient way to stay abreast of news stories or articles added to a particular web site. Rather then needing to visit your favorite web site over and over, you can use RSS to be notified when a new story or article has been added as well as read some or all of … Read more
If You Add Movies to Your PowerPoint 2011 Presentation Then Save It In .PPTX Format
I recently discovered a bug in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. If you insert a movie file into a PowerPoint presentation and you’re using the older .ppt file format, the link to the movie breaks when you close the file. I’ve confirmed that this problem occurs with .wmv and .mov movie files, and I assume it … Read more
How to Open Winmail.dat Attachments on a Mac or iOS Device
Did you receive an email attachment named winmail.dat or winmail? Here’s a brief explanation of what this file is and instructions for opening it. Winmail.dat files are sent by people using Microsoft Outlook as their email application. Under certain circumstances Outlook will encode attached files, like Word or PDF files, in this winmail.dat format.
Read morePreventive Maintenance for your Mac
Do you want to know how to perform some routine preventive maintenance on your Mac? Here’s my recommendation of helpful preventive maintenance tasks as well as instructions on how to perform these tasks. You do not need to have advanced knowledge to perform these tasks.
Read moreHow To Edit And Annotate PDFs Using Preview
Did you know that Apple’s Preview lets you easily annotate and merge PDFs as well as delete and re-order pages within a PDF? Preview is a free application which comes bundled with Mac OS X. Apple has been quietly updating over the years and it has become quite capable and user-friendly. Just a few years … Read more
How to Change the Default Application Used to Open a File
Have you wanted to change your Mac’s behavior so Apple’s Preview is used, rather than Adobe Reader to open all .pdf files? You can control which application is used to open any given file type such as .xls, .doc, .jpg, .tiff, or .awk files.
Read moreHow to Copy a DVD using Mac OS X’s Disk Utility
Here are instructions on how to copy a DVD. Important Note: Using Disk Utility will NOT work for all DVDs. Most commercial DVDs intentionally have copy-protection mechanisms in place to prevent disk duplication. This method should work fine for DVDs you made using iDVD, for example.
Read moreHow to Zoom In on Your Mac’s Screen
Update March 2013: Added instructions for OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion. Update October 2014: Added OS X 10.9, Mavericks, to the instructions for Mountain Lion. Did you know that Mac OS X has a built-in zoom feature? This feature lets you zoom in on your screen so everything on the screen is larger. Of course, … Read more
How to Take Screen Snapshots on Your iPhone
Did you know that you can take pictures of what’s on your iPhone’s screen? For example, you can take pictures of a text message, a web page or an email configuration screen.
Read moreDo you need help finding your Mac’s cursor?
[October 2022. See Sound Support’s updated post on Find Your Cursor Using Simple Mouse Locator] If you ever struggle to find your Mac’s cursor then I recommend that you use MouseLocator. This free application puts a halo around the cursor to help your eyes locate it. You can configure how long the halo is displayed. … Read more
How to Delete a User Account in Mac OS X
Do you want to give your computer to another person, but before giving it away you want to remove all of your data? If so, here’s an easy way to accomplish this. We’ll create a user account for the person who’ll be using the Mac, then delete your user account.
Read moreHow To Securely Erase A Mac’s Hard Drive
Here are instructions on how to use Disk Utility to securely erase a hard drive connected internally or externally to your Mac. These instructions were written for Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.6. The process is very similar on older versions of Mac OS X, but the screens will look a bit different.
Read moreRetrieve an Airport Password From Your Keychain
You can use these instructions to retrieve any saved password from your keychain, such as the password to your wireless network. The keychain is a secure place to store passwords.
Read moreHow to Use Mail’s Previous Recipients List
Did you know that Apple’s Mail application automatically builds a list of all recipients to whom you’ve sent email? I think it’s very useful to review this list a few times each year. By reviewing this list you can easily add useful email addresses to your Contacts and delete outdated email addresses or ones that … Read more
How to Remove and Re-Add a Printer’s Print Queue in Mac OS X 10.6
Here are instructions on how to remove and re-add a print queue. I commonly do this to fix printer issues. Somehow the old queue gets “damaged” and stops working properly. As long as you don’t mind losing any of the print jobs which may be sitting in the queue, go ahead and do the following:
Read moreQuickLook is a Fast Way to View a File
Here are some examples of how I use QuickLook. I often have a Word or Excel file I need to reference. I don’t need to make a change to the document I just want to read some information from it or remind myself of some details.
Read moreHow to Reindex Your Macintosh Quicken Data File
Here are instructions on how to reindex your Quicken Data File.
Read moreHow can I fix Entourage when it shows the spinning multi-colored ball?
When you open Entourage 2004 does it immediately display the spinning multi-color ball icon? This icon simply indicates that Entourage is thinking. However, if this icon never goes away, then Entourage is getting stuck while trying to complete a task. There are a number of possible causes, but over the past two months I’ve had … Read more
How to Delete Bookmarks from Safari or Firefox
Here are step-by-step instructions for deleting bookmarks from Safari and Firefox. The instructions might vary slightly if you’re using a different version of Safari or Firefox.
Read more