Mass convert PowerPoint metafile data
(MacWorld)

"If you use PowerPoint and receive many presentations from coworkers who use PowerPoint on PCs, you’re probably familiar with the (sometimes agonizingly slow) process of “graphic metafile conversion.” This is something that PowerPoint on the Mac must do to allow you to view and use any graphics embedded by PC users. The problem is that if you do the natural thing—open the presentation and start looking through it slide by slide—this conversion process happens every time you advance to the next slide.

Here are a couple of handy timesavers to spare yourself the annoyance of waiting for the conversion on every slide. Note that these won’t make the process any shorter (the conversion still has to take place), but they will make it much less annoying.

The first, and simplest, thing to do is to just save the presentation. When you save it, PowerPoint will convert all the graphic metafile at once, during the save operation. Opening the newly-saved presentation will allow you to breeze through all the slides, as the conversion has been done.

The second option is to switch to the slide sorter view (View -> Slide Sorter), which also forces an all-at-once conversion of the graphics metafiles.

The third method is to hit File -> Print after opening the presentation. Again, the metafile data will all be converted, and you can cancel out of the Print dialog box when it’s done.

If you use the second two options, remember to save the presentation when you’re done, so you won’t have to wait through the conversion again."

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Two Seconds to Sleep
(Apple Pro)

"Want the fastest way to put your Mac right into a deep, sleepy-bear hibernation-like sleep (no whirling fan, no dialogs, no sound — nuthin’ — just fast, glorious sleep). Just press Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for about 2 seconds and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It doesn’t get much faster than that."

Kind Regards.

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Power Copy-and-Paste
(Apple-Pro)

"In previous versions of Mac OS X (and Mac OS 9 for that matter), if you clicked on a file, copied it (Command-C), then opened an application (like Mail) and pasted it (Command-V), it would only paste that file’s name.

Now, in some applications it pastes the actual file, so you can copy-and-paste a file from a Finder window or the desktop right into your application.

Okay, so what if you do want just the name (which happens from time to time)? Just click directly on the selected file’s name (to highlight it) and press Command-C to copy it. Now you’re copying just the name. It’s a Power Pasting thing!"


Kind Regards.

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Show all files in the Finder
(MacWorld):

"If you work with Unix files and folders a lot, you’ve probably already noticed that you can’t see many of them in the Finder—the /usr, /bin, and /etc folders, amongst many others, don’t show up in the Finder.

If you want to, for instance, use a GUI editor such as Smultron or BBEdit to open a Unix file, you can’t do it via a double-click (or drag and drop) in the Finder, because those Unix files will be hidden from view. Although most editors, including BBEdit and Smultron, include an “Open Hidden” menu item for reaching these files, sometimes it’s more convenient to browse and open them from the Finder.

Using a simple Terminal command, you can work with all the files on your machine from the Finder. Open Terminal, type this command, and press Enter:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

To make the command take effect, you need to restart the Finder. One way to do this is to hold down the Option key, then click and hold on the Finder icon in the Dock. When the contextual menu appears, select Relaunch and the Finder will restart.

When it does, you’ll find that you can now see every single file and folder on your Mac:"


Kind Regards

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Use screen-saver images as desktop pictures

Tip from MacWorld with Images hence Link......

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/07/savedesk/index.php

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Copy portions of text clippings
(MacWorld)

"Do you work with text clippings? Perhaps a better question is actually “Do you know what a text clipping is?” In case you’re not familiar, text clippings are a staple of the Mac OS, having been around for a very long time. They’re nothing more than snippets of text that have been dragged out of applications and then dropped in the Finder somewhere—typically on your Desktop. Many people find this to be a good way to store little tidbits of knowledge they intend to use in the future in another program.

Before I go any further, I should point out that there are two different techniques for dragging text in OS X, depending on what kind of program you’re in at the time. In both technicques, start by highlighting the text you wish to drag. In Carbon applications, such as Photoshop, Firefox, and many other converts from the OS 9 days, you can then click-and-drag on the highlighted text. As soon as you start moving the mouse, you’ll see your text block moving around.

In Cocoa applications, which includes most everything that Apple writes as well as programs such as Smultron and OmniWeb, you’ll need to click-and-hold on your highlighted text block prior to dragging—if you forget the delay, when you start to drag you’ll find that your selection changes, and nothing at all is dragged. This is easier to demonstrate than to write about, so I made a quick movie showing the differences. At top is BBEdit, a Carbon application (where dragging works immediately); below is TextEdit, a Cocoa application (which requires a delay before dragging).

Notice that when I try to drag without delaying in TextEdit, my selection changes. I add the delay (with the mouse button pressed down), and then I can drag text just as in Carbon applications. There are technical reasons for the difference, though such explanations are beyond me. For now, just know that if text dragging doesn’t work without a delay, try again with a delay prior to dragging.

Once you’ve created a text clipping, you can use it in other apps by opening the snippet with a double-click, and then pressing Command-C to copy its contents. But if you’re running OS X 10.4, you have a few additional options—the text within the clipping is selectable and copyable, instead of being forced to use the entire clipping. After opening a clipping file with a double-click, you can actually click-and-drag on the text within the clipping to highlight a selection of the text. Unfortunately, you can’t see the selection, as it won’t be highlighted. But with a selection made, when you press Command-C, that selection will be copied to the clipboard.

You can also select and copy individual words (double-click on a word) or lines (triple-click anywhere on the line). As above, just press Command-C once you’ve made your selection, and the results will wind up on the clipboard.

There are obviously many ways to organize tidbits of knowledge; the use of text snippets is simply one option. However, if you are a snippet use and you’re running 10.4, you may find the ability to select and copy portions of snippets a valuable time saver."

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/07/textclip/index.php

Kind Regards.

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Unlock More of Your Mac’s Power!
(Apple-Pro)

"Wouldn’t it be cool if there were extra built-in automation power already on your Mac, and all you had to do was turn it on. Yeah, that’d be cool. Anyway, here’s something completely different (just kidding). Actually, you can unlock this automation by just doing a little digging.

Start by opening your Applications folder, and then look inside your AppleScript folder (don’t worry, you’re not going to be doing any scripting — they’re already written for you). Now double-click on the AppleScript Utility icon, and in the resulting dialog, turn on the Show Script Menu in Menu Bar checkbox. Close the Utility dialog, and then go to the menu bar and click on the Script icon — a list of all sorts of cool automatic functions are now just a click"



Kind Regards

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Copy and Delete at the Same Time
(Apple Pro)

"If you’re archiving a file to disk (let’s say to an external FireWire drive for example), you can drag the icon of the file you want to archive directly to that drive and the Mac will write a copy to that drive. However, your original file still lives on your current hard drive. If you want to have that file deleted from your drive as soon as it’s copied to another drive, just hold the Command key as you drag your icon, and the Mac will do two tasks for you — copy the file to the new drive and delete the original from your drive."

Kind Regards.

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Email Attachments Made Easy
(APPLE PRO)

If you want to attach a file to an email message, you can drag the file directly to Mail’s icon in your Dock. This opens Mail and creates a brand-new email message window with that file already attached. Sweet! Better yet, even if you drag multiple attachments, they all attach to just one email message (rather than creating one message for each attachment, as in previous versions of Mac OS X).



Kind Regards

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Hide user accounts in Tiger's login window
(MacWorld)

"One of the nice things about OS X is that it’s a true multi-user operating system. You can easily create additional users for various uses. Even if you’re the only user of your Mac, you might want to have more than one user. It’s a very good idea, for instance, to create a troubleshooting or testing account, which can be useful when diagnosing system issues (keep your testing account free of your main account’s login items, third party preference panels, and so forth).

You can also create accounts that are configured for various uses—a gaming account with lower screen resolutions and no startup items, a graphics account that’s configured to auto-launch Photoshop, Illustrator, and similar programs. And obviously, if you share your Mac with other family members, you can create accounts for everyone, allowing each person to have their very own workspace.

While this is all well and good, it does lead to one problem—the never-ending login window. With a few added accounts, the formally neat-and-trim login window gains a scrolling interior window, reducing both its functionality and, in my opinion, its aesthetic:

As you can see, I would have to do some scrolling to pick through the various accounts in the login window. And generally speaking, I use most of those accounts only rarely. Wouldn’t it be great if you could hide those accounts you only access occasionally? If you’re running OS X 10.4, you can easily do just that. (It was possible to hide users from the login window in pre-10.4 systems, but it’s not for the faint of heart, as it involves changing the system’s UID for the accounts to be hidden.)

Hiding accounts in 10.4 is much simpler—it takes but a quick trip to Terminal and one command. To do this, all you need to know the short name of each account you wish to hide, as seen in the Accounts System Preferences panel. Open Terminal and type this command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \HiddenUsersList -array-add account1 account2 account3

In the above example, account1, account2, and account3 represent the short names of three accounts to be hidden. You can hide as many accounts as you wish; just separate each short name with a space. Once you press Return, the hidden users are created.

If you then logout and view the login screen, you’ll notice two changes. First, the users you hid won’t show any more, and second, there’s a new entry for Other:

The Other entry is used to access the accounts you’ve hidden—choose it, and you’ll see entry boxes for username and password. There’s a second benefit (or some may view it as a downside) to this trick: hidden accounts also don’t show in the Fast User Switching menu (unless those users are logged in).

Unhiding accounts

Once an account is hidden, how do you unhide it? If you have the Developer Tools installed, you can use Property List Editor and open the com.apple.loginwindow.plist file in the top-level Library -> Preferences folder. You’ll see an entry for HiddenusersList, and then a line for each user you’ve hidden. Select a user in the list, then click the Delete button. Save the changes when you’re done.

If you don’t have the Developer Tools installed, your best bet is to simple remove all the hidden users—it’s somewhat complex to edit the plist file directly. In Terminal, enter this command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \HiddenUsersList -array-add

By specifying no names, you’ll reset and empty the hidden users list. Next time you return to the login window, you’ll see all your accounts again.

While I appreciate that Apple has made hiding users much simpler in 10.4, I’m hoping 10.5 takes it one step further: there should simply be a “Hide user in login window” checkbox in the Accounts System Preferences panel."

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/08/hidelogin/index.php

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(Apple Pro)

quote:

---

As long as your Finder window is in icon view, you can add a photo as its background. You do this by going under the View menu, under show View Options, and in the background section (at the bottom of the dialog) choose Picture. Click on the select button and the standard Open dialog will appear in which you can choose the image you’d like to appear as the background of your window. Click OK and that image will appear. Note: This works only when viewing the window in icon view. if you change to list view, the image will no longer be visible.

---

Drag-and-drop and application switching

(MacWorld)

"Everyone is probably well aware of the OS X application switcher, accessed via Command-Tab. Added in OS X 10.3, when invoked, this feature presents a row of icons across your screen, ordered by most to least recent usage. This makes it simple to work between two applications, as you can use Command-Tab to cycle between the two most recent applications.


There are also some hidden features of the switcher that we’ve covered here before—with an application highlighted in the switcher, press H to hide it or Q to quit it. You can also choose which app to switch to in a number of ways—using the scroll wheel on your mouse, the arrow keys on the keyboard, or just by moving the mouse over the icon you wish to activate. But what we haven’t previously discussed is how the application switcher interacts with drag-and-drop operations.


Simple drag-and-drop


Did you know you can use the application switcher after starting a drag operation? Start your drag, press Command-Tab, and there’s the switcher. Why might you want to do this? Say you want to drag and drop something into a TextEdit document, but you’ve hidden TextEdit, so you can’t see its windows. No problem; drag the object you wish to drop, activate the switcher, and then Tab over to TextEdit (still keeping the mouse key depressed, so as to not cancel your drag operation). Release Command-Tab when TextEdit is highlighted, and it will activate and unhide. Now you can complete your drag operation, dropping your dragged item into the TextEdit window.


Note that you can’t drag and drop an object directly onto an application’s icon in the switcher—you have to use the switcher to first activate the destination application, then drop your dragged object. If you’d like to drag and drop directly onto the application switcher itself, you might want to try Proteron’s $15 LiteSwitch X, which has that capability (as well as some other useful features, such as resizable icons).


Advanced drag-and-drop


Beyond just drag-switch-drop, though, there’s more you can do with the application switcher active. Consider the prior example. Only this time, after unhiding TextEdit, you discover that you didn’t leave a new document window onscreen to accept your dragged item. You might think you’ve got to cancel your drag operation, create a new document in TextEdit, and start the process over again. But that’s not the case.


After starting your drag and switching to TextEdit (that is, you’ve released Command-Tab), just press Command-N to create a new window. The command will be sent to TextEdit, even though you’re in the middle of a drag operation.


Drag-and-drop and application interaction


You’re not limited to Command-N with the above trick—any keyboard shortcut can be sent to any application while you’re dragging. Note that this only works if you’ve switched to that application via the application switcher (or by using Exposé). If TextEdit is active already, for instance, and you drag a file over one of its windows, none of the keyboard shortcuts will do anything. But if you’ve come to TextEdit via Exposé or the application switcher, you’ve got full access to any keyboard shortcuts.


Although my examples all use TextEdit, these tricks work with any application. Drag an object, activate Excel, and notice you’ve got the wrong window in the foreground as a drop target? Press Command-` until the proper window comes forward, then drop you dragged object. You can even do amazingly tricky stuff. As an example, say you wanted to drag-and-drop a small text file into a certain spot in your Word document. You drag, switch apps, and then find that you’ve closed the document. No problem; press Command-O (while keeping the mouse button pressed) to bring up the standard Open dialog in Word. Now, since you’re using the mouse to drag your file around, you can’t use it to navigate the Open dialog box. But the arrow keys work just fine. Use them to navigate to the file you need to open, then press Return to open it. Now move the mouse around in the document until you find your desired insertion point, and (finally!) release the mouse button. (This is a much simpler thing to do if you use a mouse or trackpad that supports drag lock, which lets you “lock” the mouse button down so you can release it.)


Mac OS X’s robust drag-and-drop support is just one of the reasons why I find the system so pleasant to use—though you might think “there’s no way this is going to work” when you try something, it’s surprising just how often it actually does work!"

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How to Make the Sidebar Work Like the Dock
(Apple Pro):

"You can customize the sidebar of the Finder window by adding other icons that make it even more powerful. For example, if you use Photoshop a lot, just open the window where your Photoshop application resides, drag the Photoshop icon right over to the sidebar, and the other icons in the sidebar will slide out of the way.

Now you can use this window kind of like you would the dock — to launch Photoshop, just click on its icon in the sidebar, plus like the dock, you can even drag-and-drop images you want to open right onto the sidebar’s Photoshop icon."



Kind Regards.

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Cancel a shut down command
(MacWorld)


"Have you ever told your machine to shut down, and then remembered that you had one last thing you wanted to do—send an email, check the weather forecast, or pay a bill online, for instance? Once the shut down process has started, it seems you’re out of luck—there’s no obvious way to cancel a shut down command.

However, there are two things you can do that will prevent your machine from shutting down. Either one should work, assuming you have enough open applications that the shut down process is taking a bit of time. First, you can try launching a program from your Dock, preferably a larger app that takes a bit of time to open. The launching application will cancel the shut down process.

If that trick doesn’t work for you, it’s also possible to stop the shut down process by having a visible Save dialog box in any application. The quickest way to get one of these onscreen is to press Shift-Command-S, which executes the File: Save As command. After realizing you want to cancel your shut down, use Command-Tab to quickly get to a still-running application that allows Save As, and then press Shift-Command-S. As soon as the shut down process reaches the app with its visible Save As dialog, the process will terminate.

Once the shut down has been cancelled, you can do whatever it is you needed to do, then shut down again when done. And don’t worry, no harm can come to your machine by canceling the shut down process."

Kind Regards.

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Keep an Eye on Things, Live From the Dock
(APPLE PRO)



"Do you like to know what’s going on “under the hood” of your Mac (stuff like your CPU usage, disk activity, memory usage — you know, total geek stuff)? If you do, you can keep an eye on things right from within the dock using Mac OS X’s Activity Monitor. It’s found in the Applications folder, under Utilities. Once you’ve found it, drag it into your dock, then click on it to launch it. Once it’s launched, click-and-hold for a moment on its dock icon. A menu will pop up, and you’ll see a dock icon menu item. This is where you choose which activity you want to monitor from its live dock icon. Choose it, and a live graph will appear in the dock that’s updated dynamically as you work."

Kind Regards.

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