This week, we have included a section from one of our user guides, providing lots of great tips about using the Mail app on the Mac. This set of tips is for members the iTandCoffee Club - below is what we cover. (Not a member? Find out more about The Club here.)
We also have a long list of other tips that we have published about Mail. Here are just some.
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A visitor to iTandCoffee last week had been finding herself very frustrated in using the Photos App on her MacBook. In particular, when making a Photo Book, she had been struggling with scrolling up and down through her photos, and through various other 'lists'. She was using the 'scroll bar' to scroll - dragging the bar up and down, but finding it frustrating that this bar constantly disappeared or was not visible at all. She was THRILLED to find out that there is a MUCH easier way to scroll up and down on her MacBook. Simply slide TWO FINGERS up and down on the trackpad to scroll. See the video below which demonstrates this gesture. The Dock is the line of apps at the bottom of your Mac's home screen. It is intended to include the Apps that you use most frequently – and just one click on an app in the dock will open it. By default, the Dock appears across the bottom of the screen – but you have control over where it appears – it can appear at the left or right side as well. Whenever an app is currently running, it will appear in the Dock. Whether it stays in the Dock or not when you 'Quit' that app is up to you. Find how to make Apps appear in the Dock, or disappear from the Dock in this week's iTandCoffee Club Handy Hint for Mac users. (Note yet a member? Find out about The iTandCoffee Club here ›) Related Handy Hints and Tips
9/1/2017 0 Comments Are your 'bursts' of photos causing your iPad, iPhone or Mac to 'burst its storage banks'?Over the holiday break, I finally took some time to attempt to tidy up my Photos library, which is currently sitting at around 28,000 videos and photos. When doing a clean out, the first area I look at is my Videos album - and get rid of anything that I don't need to keep. But another area that can contain a large amount of wasted storage is the Bursts album - showing the sets of photos that were taken on your iPad or iPhone by holding down (instead of tapping) the white button in the Camera app. By simply clearing out all the additional photos hidden by these bursts, I managed to claw back about 1GB of storage! If you are not sure how to sort out all these hidden space wasters in Bursts, check out these members-only Handy Hints for iTandCoffee Club members:
Not yet a member of the iTandCoffee Club? Find out more here › Related Handy HintsHandy Hints (for iTandCoffee Club members only)
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Related Handy Hints and articles for Mac
After update to MacOS Sierra on my iMac, I was really disappointed to find that my very long list of text replacements (or typing shortcuts) that I have built up over many years had DISAPPEARED! I do so love my text replacements, which normally sync across all my devices via iCloud. For example, when I type litc, lynette@itandcoffee.com.au replaces this code - saving a lot of typing! It seemed that nothing I did would bring back my list of replacements in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text. I tried turning off iCloud Drive and turning it back on. I tried the same on my iPhone. But nothing brought them back to my iMac. The only way I could get back my list was to export them from my Macbook Air (by selected all in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text and dragging this list to my desktop. This created a file that I could then transfer to my Mac, and the 'drag in' to the same preferences area on my iMac. Lo and behold, my text replacements were back! Here is an article that covers this problem and solution - for anyone who wants to read more. If I only had a single Mac, I would have created a new User account on that Mac, sign in to my iCloud and only turn on iCloud Drive, to sync the iCloud text replacements to that new user account. Hopefully that would have allowed me to export the text replacements in the same way as described above - saving the exported file the 'Shared' area that I could then access from my main user account. I hope that makes sense! Let me know if that works for you! Since updating my iMac to MacOS Sierra, I have suffered constant freezes and crashes - which have gotten worse and worse, to the point where I have had to restart my Mac several times a day. I have been nearly tearing my hair out - something that I can't afford to do! I had tried everything I could think of to diagnose the problem. The hard drive is fine, there is no hardware issue, no sneaky malware hijacking my computer, and I have been monitoring ingoing and outgoing network traffic using a handy app called Little Snitch. Nothing I tried seem to help resolve my problem. I was on the verge of wiping my Mac and re-installing Sierra when I decided to try one last thing. Diagnostic and Usage Data log provides a hintI had noticed in my Mac's 'Diagnostic and Usage Data' log file (which is accessed via the Console utility) that a process associated with the Photos app and iCloud Photo Library was generating an error on a regular basis, and often just before my Mac crashed. (I don't necessarily recommend iCloud Photo Library for clients due to the limitations of this service at the moment and problems that I have encountered on a regular basis.) So, I figured it might be worth disabling the iCloud Photo Library sync'ing process for 24 hours - to see if this made a difference. Pausing iCloud Photo Library's Update process fixed my problemI opened my Photos app, went to Photos -> Preferences -> iCloud and, under the iCloud Photo Library Option, chose 'Pause for one day'. Just like magic, my spinning beachballs, pauses and crashes suddenly stopped! I then worked for quite a while on many different things - things that had previously been causing issues - and had no problems. The minute I 'resumed' the iCloud Photo Library sync'ing, my problems started all over again. So, for now, I am making sure that I disable iCloud Photo Library each day before I start work (or as soon as I log in/reboot) and hope that a forthcoming Sierra update will resolve this issue. I will raise a support request with Apple to try to work out what might be causing this problem, and report back on any findings. Update 5/12/16: Before going down the path of raising a support request, I decided to wipe my Photos library and recreate it from iCloud Photo Library. This took many days (as it had to download nearly 140GB of photos and videos), but seems to have resolved the problem - for now! Related articles and handy hints
At the November Mac User Group, we'll look at the changes that have arrived as part of MacOS Sierra, and whether it is time to consider updating to this latest version of your Mac's operating system. It's free to upgrade! We will discuss what needs to be considered when performing such an upgrade - can your Mac be upgraded, how do you go about installing the upgrade, what should you consider and check before upgrading, and how to ensure you are protected if something goes wrong! Here are the Mac User Groups dates planned for the rest of 2016. 2017 dates will be published soon.
If you are not yet a member of The iTandCoffee Club, find out more here› Bookings for user group meetings are essential. If you are interested in attending, please book in as soon as possible to reserve your spot, as numbers will be limited. If we get lots of interest, we may look at running this user group more often than monthly. If you would be interested in attending an evening user group meeting, register your interest by emailing classes@itandcoffee.com.au. *Visit The Clubhouse to retrieve the applicable club-member discount Coupon Code before making your booking. Discounts only apply to only bookings processed via the iTandCoffee website - see the Book Now button below. I haven't had much time recently to have a close look at the new features of MacOS Sierra on my Mac, but one in particular really stood out to me when I was organising my photos. It is a feature of the Photos app that allows you to search for 'things' in your photos. And the best thing is that is works in Photos on the iPhone and iPad too (in iOS 10). I wanted to put together an Album of photos, one of photos of our cat and the other of our dog. I found that I can now type dog into the search field to find all photos in my library that have a dog in them. Similarly, typing cat gives me all photos that have cats in them. I found photos that I had so many forgotten photos existed in amongst my 30,000 photos! I can look for animal, tree, water, house and all sorts of other 'things'. Very handy! Do you want to learn more about Photos on your iPad, iPhone or Mac? For anyone who is interested in finding out more about the Photos app on the iPad, iPhone or Mac, we have some great classes coming up in November at iTandCoffee. Details of these classes can be found by selecting the below links.
Videos of these classes can be viewed on the iTandCoffee Website For those who have already attended any of the above classes, a video of the class is be available on this website - to help you revise and refresh all the things you learned at the class/es. If you are an iTandCoffee Club member, you can gain access to these videos FOR FREE - just email videos@itandcoffee.com.au to request your access. Those of you who not iTandCoffee Club members can also gain access to any of the class videos that are available on the iTandCoffee website. Find out how here›› Find out more about The iTandCoffee Club here›› 8/10/2016 0 Comments Working out what's slowing down your Mac (and giving you that dreaded 'spinning beachball of death'!)Just today, while trying to write an article for this fortnight's iTandCoffee Handy Hint Newsletter, I found that my Mac started giving me the dreaded 'spinning beachball of death'. It was looking pretty dire - I couldn't do anything for several minutes, which was very frustrating. I wanted to avoid the drastic step of shutting down my Mac by holding down the power button, as it is best to try to shut down 'gracefully' if at all possible. Also, I was busy converting a video and did not want to stop that process. To solve my Mac's problem, I used a standard utility on my Mac, one that showed me what was going wrong. A particular web page that I had opened was the cause of my problem. This web page was showing that it was using nearly 5GB of my computer's working memory, its RAM. What a hog! No other process could get a look-in, and this was causing my spinning beachball. Find out what I did to resolve this issue in this Handy Hint for iTandCoffee Club members: Not yet a member of the iTandCoffee Club? Why not JOIN TODAY for all sorts of great tips like this and to take advantage of a range of other great content (videos, slideshows, articles), services and discounts for members. (As a limited offer for new iTandCoffee Club members, join by 14/10/16 to receive iTandCoffee's 95-page guide "Introduction to the iPad and iPhone - A Guided Tour (iOS 10 Edition)" for FREE. Find out more HERE›) Other hints and articles about troubleshooting Mac problems
It didn't feature much in the press, but an upgraded operating system for our Macs will also be released in September - and will hail a major change to the naming convention for the Mac's operating system. OS X has been the name for the Operating System for Mac for many many years, with a version number and name further identifying each upgrade of OS X. On September 20th, Apple will release MacOS Sierra to replace OS X El Capitan, and its features will include
Here is an article from Macworld with more information about this upcoming upgrade: Can my Mac be upgraded?Not all Macs will be able to be upgraded to MacOS Sierra. Here is the list that are now too old to upgrade:
Should I upgrade my eligible Mac?As usual, iTandCoffee recommends that, unless you are super-keen the grab the 'latest and greatest', it is best to hold off for at least a couple of weeks (or perhaps longer) before downloading and installing the upgrade.
Quite often, the initial versions of an upgrade have teething problem - and you may prefer to allow other people to discover these problems and wait until Apple has released its subsequent 'update' release (or releases). The fortnightly iTandCoffee newsletter will keep you updated on news of the stability (or otherwise) of the MacOS Sierra, and will provide a recommendation on when it is safe to go ahead and upgrade. |
What's on at iTandCoffee ?Below is our list of videos, classes and other events that are coming up soon.
Videos shown are offered for eligible members of the iTandCoffee Club. If you have questions, why not join fun and informative 'user group' meetings, held once a month. All iTandCoffee classes are run as online classes (using Zoom), which means you can attend from anywhere. |
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