The Mac Admin's Blog

So, if you already know about Safari, you might be knowing how to Reset Safari and probably that's how you delete the cache while troubleshooting. Right? Well, lets learn beyond this. Let the Helpdesk do Reset Safari for deleting Cache. Today we will cover the advance and more accurate ways that will just delete the Cache and not touch anything else. Let's begin: Launch Safari Go to Safari Menu > Preferences Under Advanced tab you will see a check box for Show Develop in menu bar Close this and go to Develop menu and select Empty Cache - you are done. Let me know if you need screenshot for this post :) If you want to take this Cache deleting thing to the next level, I have more to show you. Navigate to this location:  /Users/Library/Cache/com.Apple.Safari/Cache.db This Cache.db file should be trashed and there would not be any cache left over. Relaunch Safari and it will create a new Cache.db file. Drop a line if you are interested in learing more about handling Cache on Mac...

Security has always been a concern for all of us, specially when we are in our office. For which it is necessary that we lock our machine whenever we leave our workstation. Were you been on a PC, you would have tried Ctrl+Alt+Del and clicked on Lock Computer or Windows+L can do the job. Being on Mac very few of us actually know how to lock the machine using shortcut. Let’s learn it here Open up the System Preferences and open the Security section.  Now make sure that you have set you computer to require a password once the screen saver begins or once the computer has woken up from sleep as below. Now when you hold down the keys Control+Shift+Eject your screen will go black and after 5 seconds your computer will then require a password to log back in.

Quite honestly, I think you’re putting the cart before the horse. Before tossing out the Keychain Access application I’d run through the steps necessary to cure whatever ails your keychain. For those tuning in at home, the first step is to launch Keychain Access and from the Keychain Access menu, choose Keychain First Aid. In the same-named window that appears, make sure the Verify option is enabled, enter your administrator’s user name and password, and click the Start button. If any entries appear in red, click the Repair button and click Start again. With a measure of luck, the red entries disappear and you’re left with nothing but black entries and keychains that perform as they should. If this doesn’t happen and you continue to have keychain problems, quit Keychain Access, go to your user folder /Library/Preferences, and move the com.apple.keychainaccess.plist file to the Desktop. This is Keychain Access’ preference file. If it’s corrupt it could be causing the problems you ex...

Be it MUD folder or other folders, you can hide them using the following command provided you are registered as a Developer. Some applications like MS Office, Final Cut X etc create their own user data folder inside your Documents folder, which at times is irritating. Here are the steps that you have to follow in order to hide the folder. This command has to be executed in Terminal: SetFile -P -a V "~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/" Now once it is hidden all the apps which require those folders or files in those folders will be able to access it, it just that it is hidden. You can replace the path of the folder from what is mentioned above. If you want to see that folder back in your Documents folder, try following command in Terminal: SetFile -P -a v "~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/" This command works well, but the only drawback with this application is that it needs you to be a developer to use this. For any query / suggestion, Tweet on http:/...

Here are the steps to install RAM in the Macbook Pro released in late 2008. Follow the steps as mentioned in the video and don’t forget to remove the static in your body by touching any metal surface.

Whether you are doing your Math homework on your Mac, creating a great Math study guide for your friends, yourself, or students having the ability to actually use Mathematical symbols in documents or even Safari fields comes in handy. With the simple use of Character Palette, you can have access to lots of math symbols and add them to any document within any program. To add Math symbols in your documents and fields on your Mac: Click on the “Apple” icon located at the top of your screen. Select “System Preferences” from the menu. Click on “Language and Text.” Click on “Input Sources.” Check the “Keyboard & Character Viewer” to “On” Make sure that “Show Input menu in menu bar” at the bottom is selected. NOTE: You will now notice a new menu bar icon at the top of your screen. Click on this the new ‘Input Menu’ in the menu bar and select “Show Character Viewer”. Select “Math” from the list and click on the special math symbol you w...

I remember an issue reported by a user last week who complained that his Mac asked for DVD region code multiple times for the same disc. This was in fact a PRAM or NVRAM issue. The user who called in was on iMac 27” so it was NVRAM which I had to fix. For readers who are not sure what NVRAM and PRAM is, can refer to my last post : What is PRAM and NVRAM . As we know that information regarding DVD region setting is saved in NVRAM of an iMac, so all I had to do is reset the NVRAM by pressing Command+Option+P+R before the grey screen appeared during the start up. Just by this small step, the issue was resolved.

Any person using Mac OS X machine might have heard of the term PRAM or NVRAM. These both are similar things, the only difference is that in Power PC based Mac machines it was termed as PRAM which stands for Parameter Random Access Memory and NVRAM is Non Volatile Random Access Memory which is in iMacs. What is the purpose of PRAM or NVRAM? The main purpose of PRAM or NVRAM is to save some settings related to hardware or software related to the system. In iMacs these are Screen resolution, display settings, video and screen refresh rate, recent kernel panic information (if there is any recent one), DVD region settings. How PRAM or NVRAM works? In an intel based MacBooks NVRAM takes power from the backup battery, however in other models it takes little (trickle) power from the main source to store data. The information saved in PRAM or NVRAM are: Display and video settings such as refresh rate, Screen resolution Number of colors Startup volume choic...

This post is going to be very helpful for the users who don’t have Time Machine and cannot backup data or user accounts on regular basis. For such users, its hard time in case they have to migrate the data on a new drive. Although there are many options available, but this is the simplest ever and would take just few steps to do it (though it might take hours depending on the data you are taking backup of). We are going to perform this with the help of Disk Utility. So lets start: Go to Disk Utility i.e. open Application > Utilities > Disk Utilities from Finder From the Disk Utility application, select ‘New Image’ from the toolbar or Go to File> New> Blank Disk Image Give a name to it and proceed Save this file out, you can add compressing and encryption if you feel like, remembering that it will add to the compressing and decompression time. Compression is useful if you are short of space. This process might take few hours b...

Microsoft provided the most extensive look yet into the next version of the Mac version of its popular Office suite on Thursday at Macworld 2010 . The new product, Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, will arrive in time for the 2010 holiday season. Macworld spoke with several representatives of the company’s MacBusiness Unit, who told us the company is focusing on three things with this new release: better compatibility across platforms, improved collaboration tools, and a more refined user interface. Also, as Microsoft announced last August , the suite will include Outlook for Mac, which replaces Entourage as Office’s Email client. And, in keeping with Microsoft’s 2008 promise, the new version of Office will offer renewed support for Visual Basic , which was dropped in the 2008 version of the productivity suite. The new version of Office will incorporate document-collaboration features that take advantage of Microsoft's online storage features. With Office for Mac 2011, Mac...

It was on August 20th, 2010 when I completed my Apple Certified Macintosh Technician (ACMT) certification

iPhone topping the chart, followed by iPad and Mac subsequently No doubt, iPad has become today’s trend. In spite of many drawbacks and limitations of iPad, it continues to rock European countries. It has left sale of Macs far behind. People have started believing it as the best travel companion and they are replacing  their laptops while they are on the move. According to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky , Apple is currently floating about 200,000 iPads per week, where Macs being moved are just 110,000. However, both of those Apple products stay far behind iPhone, which is apparently racking up sales of 246,000 per week. Lets have a look at graphical presentation.   Analyzing the graph, the present looks good and no doubt, Apple has planned to make some major changes in iPad and enhance the features, which will ultimately increase the sale in near future.  One of the most demanding requirement by iPad uses are a USB hub and a hi-resolution webcam. ...

Here is what Apple has promised about the new MacBook. On Tuesday, as expected the Leaked MacBook Refresh was made official.  The machine has 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo refresh with NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics and longer 10-hour battery life which is really appealing, specially for the sales guys and others who, quite often are on move.  Germany, Taiwan, Hong Kong, US and some other locations were chosen to display MacBooks in Apple stores. With all those features and an Apple logo, it costs you only $999.00.  They claim to deliver in 24 hrs within US if you order it from here and also have offered attractive EMI options of 6, 12 or 18 month special financing options .  Wait, there is more for you, if you select Apple Education Discount, you can save big on all Apple products and this offer is available here . Before you plan to buy this one, I would rather suggest you to compare all the MacBooks and chose the best one for you. Global launch of th...

When you download an application from internet, it gives a prompt to open or go to the website once the downloading is complete. Following this post you can get rid of annoying prompt. Before I start I would rather recommend that if you are new to Mac don’t disable it unless you are well versed with the behavior of Mac Operating system and its functionality. If you are smart enough to manage, then lets move ahead. All you have to do is type the following command on terminal screen. defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO This command stops the quarantine message that you get after downloading is complete. Activation and deactivation of this feature is almost same. All you have to do is change the last section of this command from ‘NO’ to ‘YES’, as mentioned below: defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool YES I have tested this on two iMacs, please let me know if you face any issue is executing it. Tweet me on: @MacMaste...

Here are some additional features which are not so popular while typing text in Mac. Character substitution In OS X Snow Leopard, Apple introduced text substitution. While for the most part it is used for symbols, it can also be used for word substitution. Apple includes a number of default options, such as copyright and trademark symbols, but provides the option to add customized words and other substitutions of your choosing. To set this up, go to the "Language & Text" system preferences, and in the "Text" tab, use the plus button to add new substitution options. In order to use symbols, glyphs, or other nonstandard characters in the substitution, when you are entering the replacement text it might be useful to have the system's "Character Viewer" panel open (available from the input menu) so you can insert desired symbols. Autocompletion One additional composition aid that is available in Snow Leopard is word suggestion, which can be use...

Whenever you launch VPN with multiple connection entries, you have to select the one of your choice every time when you try to login. There is an option where, using VPN you can set up default connection entry so that you don’t have to bother about selecting it every time when you login to VPN. This change in your VPN setting is surely going to increase your productivity.  Click on the option ‘Set as Default Connection Entry’

While writing Email if you want to compose it in colorful format, you can try following those steps: Go to ‘Entourage’ menu and select ‘Preferences’ On the left column select ‘Compose’ and it will bring the ‘General’ window Change to HTML/Plain text from the option Mail format.

There are multiple issue that can be fixed just by removing the cache We all are aware of the fact that majority of Mac apps run from a cache. If this cache gets corrupted and isn’t updated it can produce many unexpected errors. If this happens you can delete the cache and then re-launch the application. To delete the cache relating to a program go to /Users/[name]/Library/Caches , find the folder relating to the application and delete it. Make sure the app you want to solve is closed before hand. When you restart the app it should have cleared any problems. Some cache files may also be stored in /Library/Caches , of any hard drive, though you might see such cases once a while. If deleting the app results in any adverse effects (it shouldn’t do), simply close the program and move the cache files back from the Trash into there original location.

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)...

This problem might happen with any MS Office file. Some of the Mac users noticed that many of my Excel documents were not indexed as part of the Spotlight database; Spotlight search results for obviously-known content was coming up empty. The reason for this invisibility was that I still had Microsoft Office 2004 installed (some of the users keep this for macro compatibility), and when this happens, the old PowerPC version of Microsoft Office.mdimporter still sits in your ~/Library/Spotlight folder. Many mdworker console messages were indicating that only a PowerPC importer plug-in was found , thus many Office documents weren't getting indexed. The solution to this is to trash the PowerPC version of this file, and trash the /.Spotlight-V100 file, which forced a total re-indexing. The system then used the Intel version of the Spotlight importer, and all my Office documents are once again indexed.