Latest Posts in Mac 911

A fix for mute Keynote exports

I arrived in San Francisco to attend Macworld Expo only to be confronted with my first troubleshooting question. A colleague, who shall remain nameless, asked:

I’ve been asked to record narration over my Keynote presentation. I tried it at home and found that while, within Keynote, I can play back my presentation, complete with the recording of my narration, when I export the results as a QuickTime movie, I wind up with a movie with no sound. Is there a workaround for this?

Regrettably, if you’re running the latest version of the Mac OS and Keynote ’08, this is not an uncommon problem—Apple’s discussion forums are littered with messages like this. The best solution would be for Apple to fix it, but in the meantime there’s this option.

After recording your narration, move to the Finder, Control-click on your presentation file, and choose Show Package Contents. In the resulting window, locate the narrationTrack0.m4a file. This is your narration track. Make a copy and move it to the Desktop.

Open both the narration and video files in QuickTime Player Pro. Select the audio track, select everything in it, and copy. Now select the video track and choose Edit -> Add to Movie. The audio track will be added to the video track.

With luck, the two will be in sync. If not, you might wish, instead, to import the video track into GarageBand and then place the audio track in a separate track and move it around so the two are in sync.

Bugs & Fixes: Dealing with iCal and Entourage duplicates

Suppose you use Microsoft Office’s Entourage to maintain your list of contacts and calendar appointments? Further suppose you wish to sync these data with your iPhone or with your MobileMe account. Can you do it? Yes.

To do so, go to Entourage -> Preferences -> General Preferences -> Sync Services. From here, enable the options to synchronize contacts and events with Address Book, iCal and .Mac (MobileMe).

This is what I’ve done and it works pretty well overall. Except for one persistent and annoying problem: My calendar appointments inevitably begin to reproduce. That is, at some point, I’ll find two of every calendar event in Entourage. At the same time, iCal will show a matching set of duplicates. This replication process expands over time, so that older appointments (ones I have saved past their due date) often wind up with four or six copies.

Who’s to blame for this bug? There is some dispute (see this Apple Discussions thread for example) as to whether the cause lies primarily with Microsoft Office or with Leopard’s Sync Services software. Personally, I give the nod to Microsoft, as I have never had the problem in iCal unless I am syncing iCal with Entourage. What is undisputed is that there is not yet a permanent fix. Neither Apple nor Microsoft appear to be in a hurry to correct the situation.

What can you do in the meantime? Your choices are limited. Either give up on using Entourage for syncing or keep deleting the duplicates as you find them. The latter option can be a time-consuming nuisance, especially if you have a lot of duplicates. If so, try this procedure to eradicate the unwanted copies with a minimum of fuss:

1. Download iCal Dupe Deleter and use it to delete all the duplicates from the Entourage calendar in iCal.
2. Go back to the Sync Services Preferences in Entourage. From here, deselect the sync options and click OK. Return to the dialog to reselect the same options and again click OK. A dialog should appear with three choices (as shown in the screenshot to the right). Select the one to “Delete Entourage information.” In theory, this should immediately eliminate all the events in Entourage, forcing it to repopulate with the duplicate-free data from iCal.

However, when I tried this, and waited about 30 minutes, nothing happened. Growing impatient for results, I tried something else.

I have Apple’s Developer software installed on my drive. Inside the /Developer/Applications/Utilities folder is an application named Syncrospector. I don’t know much about how this utility works. But I know enough to launch it and click its Sync button. That did the trick. I immediately checked back at Entourage and iCal; all the duplicates had vanished.

The entire process, starting with iCal Duple Deleter, should only take about two minutes. There are probably other variations on this theme, perhaps simpler ones, that would have worked as well. But this is what I tried and it worked. Having a way to prevent the duplicates from appearing in the first place would obviously be a preferred solution. Until then, this will do.

10 Mac 911 resolutions

Your packet of 10 Mac 911 resolutions for the new year.

• I resolve to back up my data. Regularly. Thoroughly.

• I resolve to purchase a copy of Alsoft’s Disk Warrior if I haven’t already, because I understand that it will save my bacon should my Mac experience the worst sort of low-level corruption.

• I resolve to seriously consider purchasing AppleCare for my new Mac because Macs, like anything, break, and some of those breaks can cost a small fortune. Much as I view extended warranties with suspicion, AppleCare is often a good investment.

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Customizing Word's toolbars

Reader Barbara Van Gorder misses some of the cosmetic features found in earlier versions of Microsoft Word. She writes:

In older versions of Word there were pictures on the toolbar for cut and paste. They don’t appear in the latest version of Word. Do you know how to make them appear?

The key to populating Word’s toolbars is the Customize Toolbars and Menus command found under Word’s View menu. Invoke this command and the Customize Toolbars and Menus window appears. Click the Command tab and choose Edit from the Categories pane. In the Commands pane to the right, you’ll see all the commands classified as Edit commands. The third, fourth, and fifth entries are Cut, Copy, and Paste. To add those commands to a toolbar, just drag them, one at a time, to a position on the toolbar that pleases you.

If later the position displeases you, you must invoke this command again (you’ll find it easier to do by Control-clicking on the toolbar and choosing Customize Toolbars and Menus from the menu that appears). Once the Customize Toolbars and Menus window appears you can drag toolbar icons anywhere you’d like them to appear. To remove one, just drag it off the toolbar.

Now that you have the basics of adding commands to toolbars, why not make a custom toolbar of your own and populate it with those commands nearest and dearest to you? To do so, just invoke that Customize Toolbars and Menus command again, click the Toolbars and Menus tab in the resulting window, and click the New button to create a new toolbar. Assign an appropriate name (My Toolbar, for example), click the Commands tab, and start dragging commands to the toolbar.

Bugs & Fixes: Delete files to prevent crashes in OS X 10.5.6

Apple has recently posted several articles that offer advice on how to prevent crashes and freezes related to the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update. The fixes all involve deleting files, most often heretofore little-known system files.

Prevent a Configuring Installation error

When installing an OS X update, the Installer may stall or freeze at the stage where a “Configuring Installation…” message appears. The good news is that this bug has been eradicated in Mac OS X 10.5.6. The only problem is that you may still see this error while attempting to install the very 10.5.6 update that fixes it! If so, the solution is to go to the /Library/Updates folder and delete its contents.

I am not certain (and Apple does not explain in the relevant article) exactly why deleting this folder’s contents eliminates the Configuring Installation error. But after a bit of investigation, I at least know a bit about the overall function of this folder.

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The night before Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the shack,

No computer was whirring, and that means the Mac.

It worked hours ago, every bit, every byte,

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Bulk edit Address Book data

Reader Andrew Jacobs is interested in making big changes to contacts in Address Book. He writes:

Recently, a large company I do business with moved its headquarters and I’d like to change the address for all my contacts who work for this company. Is there a way in Leopard’s Address Book to change multiple contacts at once?

Regrettably, Address Book doesn’t include a bulk-edit feature, but there’s a way to use Apple’s TextEdit to solve this one. Try this:

Start by launching Address Book and choosing File -> Export -> Address Book Archive. This will create a backup of all your contacts. Should something go wrong, you can always return to this backup.

Now, create a group that includes the contacts who work for this company (use Address Book’s Search field to help in this effort, select all the results, and then choose File -> New Group From Selection). Name the group, select it in the Group pane, select all the contacts in the group, and drag the contacts to the Desktop to create a single vCard (.vcf) file. (I suggest dragging the contacts to the Desktop rather than the Group because, at least in my testing, when you drag a group that contains contacts with embedded images to the Desktop, the resulting vCard file can’t be edited with a text editor.)

Open this vCard file with Apple’s TextEdit. Choose Edit -> Find, and in the resulting Find window enter the company’s address in the Find field in this format: 123 Main Street;Anytown;CA;12345. (You can just copy the text from the file and paste it into the Find field.) In the Replace With field, enter the new address along these lines: 321 Broadway Avenue;Thistown;AK;54321. Click the Replace All button and close the Find window. The previous address should be replaced with the new address for all the contacts within the file. Save the file.

Drag the file you just saved onto Address Book’s All group entry. A sheet will appear that asks if you’re sure you want to import X number of cards. Below this question is an entry that reads “X cards are duplicates and will be updated.” Click Import and the contacts you originally selected will have their information updated with the changes you made in TextEdit.

Bugs & Fixes: The iPhone ‘dead strip’

Last week, I encountered the dreaded iPhone “dead strip.” This is when a rectangular strip of the iPhone’s screen, typically near the bottom, no longer responds to finger touches. It happened to my original iPhone, currently about 18 months old.

As it turned out, this particular strip is a critical one. It includes the region where you “slide to unlock”—needed before you can do almost anything else with the phone after waking it up. The iPhone was now pretty much useless.

I quickly learned that I was not in uncharted territory. Others had suffered a similar fate, although the exact location of the dead strip may vary. An Apple support article offers advice for touchscreens that “do not respond.” As I expected, none of the article’s software-based fixes, such as resetting the iPhone, had any effect. Repair or replacement of the iPhone loomed as an inevitable outcome. As my iPhone was no longer under warranty, I assumed that any remedy would cost me money.

However, buried in the Apple article was the following sentence; “If the steps above don’t resolve your issue, please schedule a service appointment with an Apple Retail Store for evaluation and replacement, if necessary, even if your iPhone is out of warranty.” That last phrase offered a glimmer of hope. It suggested, however obliquely, that Apple might replace even my “out of warranty” iPhone at no charge.

Sure enough, I took the troubled iPhone to my local Apple Store. After whisking it away to a secret back room for an evaluation, the Apple Genius brought out a new iPhone. It was a new original iPhone, not an iPhone 3G. It came in a white box, rather than the retail packaging. But it was definitely a new phone. The Apple Genius told me that the phone is listed as a “service part,” available precisely for these types of problems.

There was no charge for the replacement phone. The Genius would not admit that this was because of any formal warranty extension program. Instead, she made it sound as if she was doing me a favor. But others have reported similar outcomes.

So…if your out-of-warranty iPhone has a dead strip, bring it to an Apple Store before giving up and buying a new phone.

As an unexpected bonus, the replacement iPhone is superior to my old one in several minor ways. In particular, the maximum ringer volume is significantly louder, making it easier to hear the phone in noisy environments.

Revisiting the Office and Spaces conflict

After last week’s column describing problems using Microsoft Office applications with Leopard’s Spaces, the folks at Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit alerted me to a blog posting they have on this matter. In brief, that blog entry concludes the following:

• Problems should only occur when the Microsoft Office Toolbox window is open.
• The symptoms stem from the fact that the Toolbox window is created using Carbon rather than Cocoa APIs (application programming interfaces). By itself, this should not be a problem. Indeed, Apple confirmed to Microsoft that the Toolbox code is “generally acting correctly.” Still, the Carbon-based Toolbox and Mac OS X do not play well together.
• The ultimate fix is for Microsoft to “overhaul the entire architecture of the Toolbox,” converting it to Cocoa. Microsoft plans to do this eventually, but not for a “dot release” of Office 2008. Why? Because it’s “too risky.” That is, any attempt to fix this problem, without doing a major overhaul, could easily wind up breaking something else, something more critical than a Spaces conflict.
• Until the next major version of Office is released, the best hope is for Apple to remedy the problem via a Mac OS X update.

Migrate data from PC to Mac

Reader Steve Negrete is about to undertake a delicate operation. He writes:

My parents have had a Windows PC for many years but I’ve finally talked them into buying a Mac. The problem is they expect me to move their data from the old PC to the Mac. Do you have any recommendations for the best way to do this?

It just so happens that I performed this very task for my aunt just last weekend. And performed it successfully, I might add.

There are many ways to do this—some free (depending on the gear you own) and others not quite as free.

If you have a spare external hard drive with a USB interface you can use it to copy your parents’ files from the PC to the Mac. First, format the drive so that it can be used on the PC. To do so, plug the hard drive into the Mac, launch Disk Utility (found in the Utilities folder), select the drive in the left pane of the Disk Utility window, click the Erase tab, from the Volume Format pop-up menu choose MS-DOS (FAT), and click Erase. (And yes, this will erase all the data on the drive so be sure there’s nothing on that drive you want.) With the drive formatted for Windows, unmount it from the Mac, plug it into the PC, and copy the files you want from the PC to the hard drive. Unmount, drag it back to the Mac, plug it in, copy from hard drive to Mac, done.

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Removing relations from Address Book labels

The good Doctor Theopolis is confounded by Address Book butting in where it’s not wanted. He writes:

When I print labels with Address Book it adds names of spouses and children from their respective fields, making the first line of the mailing label so long and therefore small (due to automatic sizing) that the labels are useless. Is it really supposed to work this way?

Apparently so. The idea is that if you’ve taken the trouble to add a contact’s family members, it’s likely that you’ll want to address the entire clan on an envelope or mailing label. And that’s fine for personal correspondence or holiday cards, but less than ideal for business correspondence. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways you can work around this.

The more tedious way is to create a separate card for each family member that you don’t want to appear on the label and either assign no address to that contact or assign an address different from the one for the related contact. For example, if you don’t want Shiloh, the kid of Sheila Jones of 123 Main Street, to appear on the list, create a separate Shiloh Jones of 321 Main Street contact. As I said, tedious.

Less tedious is to open the contact in Address Book, click the Edit button at the bottom of the window, click on the relation entry (child, father, or spouse, for example) and choose Custom from the menu that appears. In the resulting Add Custom Label sheet, enter a new relation entry, but with the first letter capitalized—Child rather than child or Father rather than father, for example. Address Book adds relations to envelopes and labels only if they’re the original lower-case names that Apple built into Address Book. Create a new name with the first letter capitalized and the application no longer recognizes the name as a relation and therefore won’t spackle it to your envelopes and labels.