Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW
Ask TUAW: Reinstalling, auto-saving, license keeping and more
This time in Ask TUAW we'll be looking at several different questions about reinstalling (OS X, Office for Mac, and printer drivers), as well as how to auto-save in iWork, store software licenses and more.As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
David asks
I was wondering if I can somehow get back the unneeded printer drivers if I need them again in the future. Is this possible?
Yes, the printer drivers are located on the original install discs. However, if you get a new major brand printer you will almost certainly be able to download drivers from that company's website.
Brian asks
I have been getting many crashes from leopard so is there a way to format just my OS X partition and not my Boot Camp so I can reinstall from time machine?
Absolutely. When you boot your machine from the install disc (reboot the computer while holding 'c' key) you'll be offered a choice as to where to install. Just choose your existing OS X partition and it will leave your Boot Camp partition alone.
Sigbhu asks
I want to make small windows like Fonts, Colours, etc in apps like Mail or Journaler HUD. How do I do it?
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking about. Are you asking just how to reveal these palettes? They're available in the Format menu. There are also system-wide keyboard shortcuts in the applications that support them: ⌘+T for fonts and shift + ⌘+C for colors. Or are you asking how to make these programmatically? In that case I can only point you to Apple's Developer Reference Library.
aaron asks
Is there any way to set up auto-save in the iwork apps (and textedit)? I've had a couple kernel panics that have wiped out a lot of work already.
Unfortunately, an auto-save feature is not built into the iWork apps. However, several folks out there have cooked up work-arounds based on Applescript. Have a look at this thread over at Apple Discussions. I havent' used them myself but Yvan Koenig has placed some auto-saving Applescripts on his iDisk (look in the For_iWork folder).
Jesse asks
I have office 2008, and I deleted some of the programs that I don't use to free up some disk space, now it won't let me install updates. Is there a way to do a restore of office, or what do I need to do?
You can just re-install Office from the original discs. Just run the installer on the original discs and it should take care of it for you. You will, however, have to apply all the updates again.
ant asks
Is there a piece of software that lets me manage all my shareware disk images and license keys? I'm forever losing the license keys and re-downloading disk images
There are a number of different applications that will keep track of licenses. License Keeper ($19.95) will do more or less everything you ask, including storing disk images (as attachments). RapidoSerial will give you a free way to store the licenses, but it lacks some of the amenities of License Keeper. Of course, you can just use a general purpose snippet keeper like Yojimbo ($39) to do this kind of thing, but if you really want a dedicated application, License Keeper is probably your best bet.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
rdkrauss said 4:42PM on 11-30-2008
I am running an iBook G4 with the latest official version of Safari.
I use Camino as my browser, and Camino has no problems loading all my passwords from Keychain when i visit various sites. However, I have started using Safari and it refuses to load those passwords. I have check the option to Auto Fill passwords but it simply will not do it. All the password work fine in Camino so I do not know what is causing the problem in Safari.
Any thoughts on why Safari won't use my stored passwords from Keychain?
Reply
Answer said 9:08PM on 11-30-2008
Keychain entries are app specific to avoid one app deleting another apps entries. Camino cannot access Safari's Keychain entries and vice versa
Jesse said 5:02PM on 11-30-2008
Is there a way to chose the audio output (from internal speakers to headphones) if you have headphones plugged in without unplugging the headphones?
Reply
Damien K. said 7:12PM on 11-30-2008
Go to System Preferences, go to sound, go to Output and select one
Scott Gardner said 5:07PM on 11-30-2008
@rdkrauss, check out 1Password. It provides an easy-to-use interface to store your Internet logins in one place, and adds a "1P" button to your menu bar of all your browsers to give you one-click access to your logins.
http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password
Reply
umijin said 9:37PM on 11-30-2008
Your tip isn't applicable, unfortunately. The original question was about licenses of software, not web site/app logins and passwords.
Tariq said 10:04PM on 11-30-2008
@ umijin, he was replying to the first comment in threads, hence the "@rdkrauss" in the beginning of the comment. And his tip is valid.
Aaron said 5:12PM on 11-30-2008
To clarify the question that Sigbhu asked, HUD (heads-up display) is a style for windows and panels in OS X. An example of HUD is the Pixelmator app. Everything in Pixelmator uses the HUD format. Leopard's Quick Look also utilizes the HUD style.
I'm far too busy/lazy to actually look up the procedure myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could simply find the .nib files for these panels (buried in OS X's system folder, probably) and then just edit them with Interface Builder to be HUD style. Then again, it's also possible that it's more embedded into the system than that. But if you're feeling adventurous, have a look and let me know! If you really eff something up, you can always just do a quick archive and install of OS X and you're back on your feet in a couple of hours.
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Kris Van de Sande said 5:17PM on 11-30-2008
I have my iMac on my sleeping room, that doubles as my office. At
day, I have no problem with my screensaver playing for an hour before
my displays are put to sleep.
However, at night, when my mac is rendering, etc, I rather have my
displays sleep after some minutes inactivity.
I now have a hot corner enabled that sleeps my displays, but is there
a way to have it, say, at 1 AM having a 1 minute screensaver time, and
then the displays to sleep?
Or is there any other logical solution?
thanks.
Reply
Kyol said 5:39PM on 11-30-2008
It's not _easy_, as such, but there's a trick for it: Download an application like Lingon that can add launchd entries for you, and add User Daemons like so:
1 Name) com.[your username].pmset-light
2 What) /usr/bin/pmset displaysleep 60
3 When) Every day at 9:00am
And:
1 Name) com.[your username].pmset-dark
2 What) /usr/bin/pmset displaysleep 1
3 When) Every day at 11:59pm
This will set your display to automatically sleep after 1 minute at 11:59pm, and set it to stay awake for an hour at 9am. Adjust the times to suit and you're golden. You may have to log out and back in to get OSX to read your updates.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a better way to do it, but having had several macs without switchable displays for years now, this is about the best I've found.
Steve said 5:32PM on 11-30-2008
I take a lot of photos, and I like to cut out the worthless shots in Finder before I edit them and then import into iPhoto. That means a lot of deleting. But Finder seems to make this impossible.
Let's say I have 1,000 photos, of which I want to keep about 200 in the end. The simple way to do this would be to flip on Cover Flow or use Quick View, and just keep hitting CMD-Delete as I hit file after file I do not want. But Finder makes this impossible, because instead of selecting the next file when I CMD-Delete, it instead completely deselects everything! If I hit the down arrow it starts me all the way at the top of the folder, and if I'm using Quick View the preview changes to the parent folder's contents.
Is there some trick I don't know for this relatively simple file management trick? I find using the mouse for this incredibly tedious, dragging and dropping 800 files is obviously a pain. Please help!
Reply
Mark said 5:43PM on 11-30-2008
You can use the Cover Flow view in the Finder.
Mark said 5:46PM on 11-30-2008
Sorry, I thought you hadn't tried Cover Flow. It seems to work for me though: I delete the file with cmd-backspace and Finder selects the next picture.
Steve said 6:01PM on 11-30-2008
@Mark:
Try it in a long list of images (or I assume any other files). Sometimes it works for the first 10 or so, but then fails consistently afterwards.
Scott Gardner said 10:44PM on 11-30-2008
@Steve, you can select all your pictures and then press the Spacebar to launch a simple slideshow (optionally in full screen mode). From there, you can selectively import the photos you want to iPhoto. Or check out Path Finder, which offers several enhanced ways to preview images.
DJFriar said 6:11PM on 12-04-2008
I also have this issue and would like to see a fix for it. Though I do think reporting it as a bug would help to. That said, anyone have a betetr solution? Currently I use Phoenix Slides for previewing and deleting, but Cover Flow would be much smoother & faster for my workflow.
Sam said 5:38PM on 11-30-2008
If you want to control how your audio is managed, you could look at Sound Source (http://rogueamoeba.com/freebies). I am not sure if it can select between headphones and internal speakers but if you are using an external audio device, it is excellent.
Reply
zsports said 6:00PM on 11-30-2008
Question for next time:
I was wondering what I need to do to prepare my mac for sale on ebay or to another third party? Should I reinstall the operating system? I obviously have sensitive data on my machine that I want to wipe before i put my system up for resale. What's the best way to handle this dilemma?
Reply
Karen LH said 10:04PM on 11-30-2008
You should be able to bring the old Mac up in target disk mode and connect it to another Mac. Use Disk Utility to erase the old Mac's disk: click "Security Options" for more secure erase options. Then do a clean install of the system from the install disk.
Karen LH said 6:24PM on 11-30-2008
The Mail program keeps putting up a "password rejected" alert for my various email accounts. When I re-enter the password in the dialog box, everything works fine for a little while, until it tells me that one of my passwords has been rejected again. This has gotten so annoying that I've started quitting Mail each time after checking my email. This only seems to be happening in my account on my Mac: when I try accessing the same email accounts via Mail from other computers, everything seems to work fine.
What do I need to do? Delete and recreate the email accounts in Mail? Delete some plist file?
I archive all of my (non-spam) email in separate mailboxes (within Mail), and don't want to mess those up.
Thanks.
Reply