The Mac Admin's Blog

In the scenario where you are able to receive mails but unable to send it because the Send button is grayed out or is completely inactive. Try those steps out, this has worked many of my home users. Launch Mail. Go to the Mail menu & choose Preferences . Click on Accounts in the Preferences window.  Open the Account Information pane. Here could be the first reason, that the "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)" pop-up menu could be set to "None". Change it and select your server from the "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)" pop-up menu. These steps should work, so run a test & see if you are able to send the mails. If this did not work then the problem should be in the settings of your SMTP server. Go to the Mail menu & choose Preferences once again.  Click on Accounts in the Preferences window & select your account from the left side. Click the Account Information pane. Here in the "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)" pop-up

One of the fact of life is we keep losing and getting things. If unfortunately you ever miss your iPhone somewhere you can lock it using your MobileMe account. This is one of the safest investment that you can make. Just to remind you about MobileMe , this is not just a security application, but it is perfect combination of office and personal tools. It has push Email, push contact, push calendar and inbuilt photo Gallery for iPhone and iPod touch. Also, it has many more features, visit Apple official website for more information. Lock your iPhone remotely Once you realize you haven’t simply misplaced your iPhone at home under a pile of laundry, you may want to protect its contents until your iPhone is safely back in your hands. Just sign in to your MobileMe account and remotely set a four-digit passcode lock to prevent people from using your iPhone, accessing your personal information, or tampering with your settings.

Here are some applications that might increase value in your work. Get a trial version and see if you like it. Most of them are for official purpose.   Slices Slices is an application that allows you to split and combine files. With Slices you can email large documents, as well as fit very large files onto CDs, memory sticks and other writable media. And, like SlidePad, Slices is free! Learn more | Download SlidePad SlidePad is a powerful, convenient note-taking application that allows you to unobtrusively take notes without ever leaving your keyboard. And SlidePad is free! Learn more | Download Parachute This is a versatile, powerful backup tool that allows you make automated backups of your files. With Parachute you can select files individually, set your own schedule and backup to both local disks and remote servers. Learn more | Download | Buy Now Renamer Renamer gives you to option to rename and number many files at once. If you've

  MySQL is a popular, free database server with dozens of books to teach you the ropes. In the past you had to install MySQL with the Macintosh Unix command line interface but more recent versions can be up and running in minutes. Download the MySQL package installation. MySQL is in varying stages of development, including alpha and beta releases, so make sure you download the most stable version for your Mac. Make sure to select the download for your platform (Intel or PowerPC) and version of OS X. Double click on the DMG file. A disk image will mount on your desktop. If you download a TAR compressed file (which contains files and folders), you downloaded the wrong installer. Run both the MySQL installer and the MtSQLStartupitem PKG files. You may have to enter your administrative password. Select your internal drive as the destination disk. Drag the file MySQL.prefPane to your user library folder. It should be placed in the subfolder "Preference Panes." O

  If you want to share your party video with your friend and have only one copy of the DVD then this guide will help you to create an image file and then you can burn as many DVD you want later on. Insert the DVD that you have in the Macintosh CD/DVD drive. The CD/DVD tray does not eject like it would in a PC. When you see the Finder, click on Utilities . Choose the Disc utilities choice on the menu. Click on the DVD to select it. Click New and then from whatever the DVD was named in the previous step. Choose that from the file menu at the top of your screen. Enter the new file name from the master DVD. Make it something easy to remember for your new DVD on the Macintosh. Click the burn image in the disk utility screen. Watch the dialog box on the screen to see your DVD burning progress. Insert a blank DVD when prompted during this process. Now click the Burn button to complete the burning process for your DVD. Once you have created the image an

This could happen after creating a new Keychain This generally happens when you are in a network and the password is changed by an admin or helpdesk remotely using the server or AD. This scenario arises when your domain password is expired and you cannot do it yourself and you call your helpdesk to do it for you. Once you set a new Keychain on your Mac, you might not get the old saved passwords. If this happens all you have to do is, go to saved preferences files and find the new keychain.plist fiile and move it to the desktop and the old file which is now renamed as oldkeychain.plist should be renamed as keychain.plist. Just those two simple steps will surely bring all your old passwords in the Keychain database that will use your new passwords.

Simple steps to increase speed of your Mac. These changes will not make any harm to your machine and can be tried by anyone who is not even too tech savvy.   Rebuilding your desktop is recommended once a month. This can be done by holding down the Command and Option keys while you restart your Mac. Keep the keys pressed until the computer asks if you want to rebuild the desktop. Click OK . Also remove the fonts you never use. (The process is to open the Fonts folder in the System Folder and simply drag the fonts to Trash). Open the Extensions Manager control panel and turn off system extensions that you don't need. It is always recommended to add RAM if your computer takes a long time to open programs and slows down when working with multiple programs or large files. These small steps would definitely increase the speed of your Mac.

How to add your name as Author in any MS Office application? When you check the properties of any MS Office document there is a field of “Author” and if you want your name to be displayed as author of the document, then follow three simple steps and your document is ready to show off. 1. Launch the application in which you want to be added as author (in this post we will consider MS Word). 2. Now go to Word menu and select preferences . 3. From the left column menu select User Information . the details entered here will show when anyone checks its properties. Make sure that you make those changes before you start editing the file. To check the properties of the file, select on it and press Command+I in combination. This combination shows the properties and complete info of the file.   Some other changes that can be made in a file using Command+I .

All he applications mentioned here are exclusively free for for use. All of them are full version.   Thunderbird This bird is the best technological counterpart of the pigeon or the hawk used for sending mails in earlier ages. Newsgroup and RSS feed reading comes as an added advantage.  Download and try it from here .   GIMP The mightiest photo manipulator is ready to ride the Snow Leopard. Forget anything that ends with a suffix -shop. No need to shop. Its free. Download and try it from here .   OpenOffice The free and open productivity suite. Thousands of free online templates. Impressive presentations. Everything an office gives and more. You have to see it to believe it. Download and try it from here .     Perian Your Quick time never takes time off to play many other wonderful video formats on the net. Its time to teach him a lesson. Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. Download and try it

How to delete cache in Entourage? The steps mentioned here will work for all types of mail i.e. POP3 , IMAP and Exchange . To clear the cache, open Entourage (make sure you log off from any other instances of Exchange on your iPhone or Smart phone or Blackberry ). Before you follow the steps further you should make sure that you are connected to the network. Within Entourage, on the left, mouse over the name of your Exchange account and press the ‘Control+mouse click’ simultaneously to get the contextual menu. In case you have activated secondary button in mouse then just ‘right click’ on it. Select Folder Properties. Under the General tab, which opens by default, click on the Empty button to empty the cache.