MORE SETTINGS FOR MOUSE IN MAC

How to change the settings of the mouse

1. Go to System Preferences and open Keyboard & Mouse.
2. Select the tab that says Mouse.From here you can control mouse sensitivity as how fast the pointer moves across the monitor when you work or move the mouse, and adjust for your double-click reflexes.
3. If you want to control the speed of the mouse pointer across the screen when you move the mouse, you need to glide the Tracking Speed slider left which will slow it down or right to increase the speed.
4. In order to change the speed of a double click, move the slider 7 adjust to the level of your choice.
5. Now comes adjusting the scroll wheel (if you have it in your mouse) and this is also done in the same way, being controlled by the slider representing left to slow & right to fast.

Mouse settings in Mac seems much easier in PC.

HOW TO CHANGE MOUSE SETTINGS IN MAC

Enabling right click and coming back to control+click.

In general, the mouse setting for a Mac mouse is made single click and for contextual menu it is ctrl+click. For the users switching from a Windows environment it is tough to work with one click and in general it is handy to work with one hand rather than using other hand to hold down control key. If we use the terms that Mac prefers, they call the single click button as Primary and the right click as Secondary button. In order to change it, follow these steps.

a. Go to System Preferences and open Keyboard and Mouse.

b. The selected drop down in blue is the option from where we can activate and deactivate the secondary button.

We will talk about more settings of mouse in upcoming post.

HOW TO CONTROL VOLUME IN MAC

How to control, disable and enable sound in Mac?

Controlling sounds on Mac is really easy. The sound icon shows on the menu bar somewhere to the extreme right. This sound icon can be shown and hidden as per your choice. To increase and decrease the volume all you have to do is just click on the sound icon on the menu bar and then click on this sound icon and you will get the seek bar that allows you to adjust the volume.
There are some further sound controls and to play with it all you need to do is, open System Preferences and click on Sound.
Img 1

This will take you to a new window that controls sound on your machine.

Img 2
Select the output tab (as in Img2) and to control the speakers, if there is any external speaker attached, you will see it listed here and in order to change the settings for this speaker just select it (and it will be highlighted blue) and control the settings.




Img 3


If you want the volume bar not to be displayed in the menu bar then just check the option that says Show volume in menu bar.

If you use microphone and want to control settings for it then as in Img 2 click on third tab that is Input and this will allow you to control the mic.

INSTALLING XAMPP SERVER ON MAC

What is xampp and how to install it?

XAMPP is a free and open source cross-platform web server package, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages. This was developed by Apache and the details are available here.

Xampp helps you, if you are a web programmer or even designer and you want to test the developed site as how will it look exactly when it is launched on the web. Xampp makes your machine run as a web sever and host sites locally.

Process to download and install Xampp on Mac Machines.

Step 1: DownloadSimply click on the link below. This is the latest version. A complete list of downloads (older versions) is available at SourceForge.
Download Xampp. (Download source: http://www.apachefriends.org)

Step 2: Open the .dmg file and the very first thing you need to do is move or drag xampp folder into you Applications folder.

Step 3: Now in order to run this all you need to do is open xampp control and launch Apache, MySQL and ProFTPD, where ProFTPD is not required until you have to upload the site on the server on the web.

Step 5: The final step is to check if this application is running fine, open your browser and type http://localhost/ and you should see a page that is pasted below.

For further details and assistance please click here, it will take you to the manufaturer of Xampp.

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BASIC FIXING TOOLS IN MAC

Disk Utility, Network preference pane, Console, Activity Monitor & System Profiler

These are five pillars of troubleshooting a Mac machines. If you are facing any issue try to check if you could locate it and then try to resolve using these tools. A breif intoduction of each of the item is here and I will surely write details of each of them later in coming posts.

1. Disk Utility: Disk Utility, located in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities folder, can perform two types of repairs via the following choices in the First Aid tab:
a. Repair Disk b. Repair Disk permissions.
While Repair Disk can correct a variety of directory problems, it is generally incapable of repairing severe directory corruption for which you can try few third party applications, but before you try them, assure that you have the latest version of the utility that is compatible with the version of Mac OS X you are using.
Repair Disk Permissions verifies and, if problems are found, resets (repairs) the permissions on Apple-originated files and folders (objects), i.e. Mac OS X system-related objects and Apple-provided applications bundled with Mac OS X. Click here to know how to repair disk permissions.

2. Network Preferences: The very basic settings of sound, network, parental controls etc are available, if I explain you in terms of Windows it is similar to Control Panel. If you are facing problems with Internet connection, click on the Assist Me button. From the dialog box that appears, select Diagnostics. If you still need more help, and you have sufficient technical skills, try Network Utility (in /Applications/Utilities). See “Inside Network Utility” for a guide to its most useful features.

3. Activity Monitor: This is a GUI application inbuilt in Mac OS X. It provides graphical representations of your Mac's CPU, system memory, disk activity, disk usage, and network processes. This little utility is really easy to overlook, but it can help you manage your memory and processing power when running lots of applications. If you prefer to work in the text-only Terminal application instead, you can view much of this information by using the top command.

4. Console: This tool lies in Application>Utilities and you can't actually fix issues using Console but if you really try to focus you will come to know where exactly the problem is and what needs to be fixed, just like a diagnosis tool.

5. System Profiler: This lies next to Console, is an informative application which makes you aware of the system hardwares and softwares. You can get good answers from System Profiler to the questions like, If the RAM on you machine is installed as it should be, If you are running the latest version of printer driver and lots more.
Hope this will give you a little insight to those applications in Mac, for detailed info please wait for the next post.

BASIC INFO OF LEOPARD OS X.5

Short Intro About Leopard

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is Apple's next operating system after Tiger i.e. 10.4 that was launched more than two years ago. Apple claims that there are more than 300 differences on Tiger and Leopard, while not earth-shattering, further streamline the experience of using a Mac.
Now the very next question comes to your mind would be, "Is Leopard worth paying what Apple has set his price to?" For some of you it maybe not, because you are contented with the way Tiger works for you. If you are looking for Time Machine, you need a Leopard, if you need Bootcamp, even then you must have Leopard. Leopard makes it far easier to find documents and applications than Windows Vista. The recently launched Spotlight is just impressing. Leopard's interface niceties made the daily mechanics of using the computer more pleasurable. Mundane chores, such as finding files and backing up data, become a visual treat (See our photo gallery of screenshots.)
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will cost you $129 out of the box, or thre is a good deal i.e. $199 for up to five users. Apple is charging $9.95 to the users who have got Mac after October 1st, 2008 to have Leopard shipped to them.
It might take around 45-60 mins to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on an iMac (i.e. an Intel-based MacBook). This was just about iMac but on some machines Leopard didn't run so smoothly. It took a painfully long hour or so to install on an iBook G4, the 933 Mhz processor just grazing the minimum requirements, make sure that you don't install it on old machines otherwise it will make you cry due to its terribly slow speed.
The best thing in Leo installation is Archive & Install where you can transfer all old stuffs from your Mac to new OS. Once you install Leopard on MacBook Pro 2.33 Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM, might be some problems with various applications, including Parallels and GroupCal. To be very honest, more the RAM faster your Leo will be.
Some users, however, also reported the fabled "Kernel panic error" historically associated with Microsoft Windows; Apple addressed the issue.
To run Leopard, you'll need an Intel or PowerPC G5 Mac. A PowerPC-based G4 Mac with an 867MHz or better processor will work, as well. Apple suggests having 512MB of RAM. Additionally, but not compulsorily you'll need a USB or FireWire external backup drive (or a file-sharing volume on a network) to use Time Machine.
If you want a trining movie for installtion of Leopard with explanation of every step you can buy it in $5.00 only, or write us, we will send you free, just write a mail with a subject "10.5 Installation Video Required" to: humamlaeeq@bornleader.co.in

INCOMING MAILS ARE MISSING

Unable to find incoming mails in inbox

I got a user who faced the issue that whenever someone sends her a mail she could not find it in her inbox. She checked the details and sent mails to herself but was unable to find it there. The main issue was that she had exchange account configured in her Entourage and could see the mail in her webmail but as soon as she launched her Entourage the mail disappeared.
It did not take long to understand that this problem is just because she had a rule set up which was causing all the mails which were coming in the inbox were automatically getting deleted. So just deleting the rules fixed her problem.
If we move a step ahead there could be some other reason which could cause this happen. The other reason could be MLM, Mailing List Manager. If a rule is set up under MLM you will not be able to get your mails and will take effect as soon as Entourage is launched.
So if you face any wiered issue please don't forget to check the MLM & Rules. For some more details on MLM & Rules please click here.

If you want to retrieve the old mails which are deleted you can follow these steps to Recover Deleted Items.

MAIL LOST WHILE SENDING

Mail lost after clicking on 'Send'

This happens in Entourage that when you click on send and mail is not send and is lost. This happens when the database is corrupt and needs a rebuild. If in case you will try to find this particular mail, you wont be able to, in your inbox or other folders under the account. It always sits in the "Outbox" of your "On My Computer" folder. Now in order to fix the problem of 4363 and 4362 you need to click here.

HOW TO FIND ALL MAILS FROM A CONTACT?

Finding all mails & items related to one contact

Here is the simple step that we can follow to find out all mails and other items related to a contact.

1. Launch Entourage and click on Address Book.

   

2. In your address book, select a contact of whom you want to check the details about.

   

3. Click on Contact & go to Find Related Items.

   

4. You will find that all mail related to this contact appears in a new window.

   

Here it is... the list of all the items related to this contact.

HOW TO ADD AN IMAGE TO A CONTACT?

Add a picture to a contact

Adding a picture gives a personal touch to the contacts saved in your book and lets you easily identify who sent the e-mail to you. When you receive a message from a contact with a photo, their picture appears in the preview pane. You can add a picture to any contact in the Entourage Address Book.

Here is the procedure to add a picture in an Address book:

1. Click Address Book.

   

2. In your address book, double-click a contact.

   

3. On the Personal tab, drag a picture to the box labeled Drag and drop image here.

   

   Tip To remove a picture from a contact, drag the picture to the Mac OS X trash.

4. Close and save the contact.

5. Notice that the picture appears in the contact's address book record.

   

ENTOURAGE TROUBLESHOOTING: CRASHES WHILE LAUNCHING - IV

Entourage crashing due to corrupt database

In this case we need to rebuild database of Entourage.

SHORTCUT TO LAUNCH REBUILD DATABASE:

Hold the Option key while launching Entourage.

a. The other option to rebuild the database is to first close all the Microsoft applications.
b. Launch Applications (Command+shift+A).
c. Go to 'Microsoft Office 2004' then 'Office' and then open 'Database Utility'.
d. Select Rebuild Database & click on Continue.
e. If there is any MS office program running, it will give you a prompt to close it down.
f. Once the rebuild process is complete, click on Done.
g. Entourage will bring you back to the same window, this time click on Quit.

Once this process is complete relaunch Entourage. For the very first time your Entourage might take long time depending on the size of your folders and database.
Other reasons could be Fonts, Schedules, Duplicate daemons.

ENTOURAGE TROUBLESHOOTING: CRASHES WHILE LAUNCHING - III

Entourage crashing due to corrupted Schedules

Sometimes you try to open Entourage and it crashes at soon as it is launched. In this case though there could be various reasons one of them is "Schedule" that could create the problem.
To fix this we need to stop schedules at the time of launching Entourage.
Hold down "Shift" key and launch the application and this will stop schedules from launching, if by doing this the application is not crashing that means issue is with schedules and you need to find and delete the schedule that is creating Entourage to crash.

Other discussed reasons are database, fonts and duplicate daemons.

ENTOURAGE TROUBLESHOOTING: CRASHES WHILE LAUNCHING - II

Entourage Crashing due to Fonts

There are two fonts that are known to be one of the most popular reasons of Entourage crashing.
The first one is Helvetica Fractions which is majorly responsible to cause problems, the second is Times Phonetic.
In order to fix this issue, don't just disable these fonts in Font Book, but physically remove them from your system and try to launch Entourage again.

Other discussed reasons are database, schedules and duplicate daemons.

ENTOURAGE TROUBLESHOOTING: CRASHES WHILE LAUNCHING - I

Entourage is crashes when trying to launch.

One of the recently tested reasons is duplicate daemons. To launch an application there is a daemon in start up items. if there are multiple daemons for the same application then they could create conflict and stop Entourage from launching.
The fix to this is to delete all the daemons from start up and launch Entourage, once launched, it will create its own daemon.
There could be some other reasons like fonts, database and schedules.

ENTOURAGE TROUBLESHOOTING: RESPONDING SLOW

Entourage responding too slow

Too many mails in your inbox.
How it impacts: Every time when send & receive runs on your machine, it takes time to sync depending on number of mails on the exchange server.
Fix: You need to move mails from your exchange/POP/IMAP account to your computer folder.
Process: In order to fix this follow the following steps:
a. Launch Entourage.
b. Select the mails that you want to move from exchange to your computer. You can use command key to select multiple items.
c. Now drag those folders to "On My Computer" folder in Entourage.
d. If you want to add sub folders under "On My Computer", just use contextual menu on this folder.
Just like the mails you can also copy the whole inbox in "On My Computer" folder.

Please Note: Once you move those mails from your inbox, it is moved from the server so you will not be able to check those mails from anywhere else, i.e. from any other machine.

Other useful steps could be Archiving the mails to Macintosh HD or any other storage device or you can also create rules to delete certain certain items from the inbox automatically.

STOP OUTGOING MAILS AFTER REBUILD

After Rebuild Entourage starts resending old mails

Working at a help desk we use to get this issue that sometimes after rebuilding database Entourage starts sending old mails (upto one year old) to the users added in the contact list.
Though it took really long time but finally we reached to the conclusion, "The reason is not that rebuild is unsuccessful but it is due to the duplicate identity that is created while creating the database." This duplicate identity is selected in the place of main identity in Entourage and all you need to do is just change it to the default original identity what it should be and it will stop sending the mails.

ENTOURAGE TROUBESHOOTING: COMPOSING MAIL

Partial mail vanishes while composing

This seems to be, though it is actually not a problem.
MS office has enabled Entourage with a feature that allows the user to highlight a portion of the original message and then when you forward or reply, it only brings that part that's highlighted into the new message. In order to fix this all you have to do is don't highlight anything in the original message and it will all appear in the new message or otherwise if you want, you can use this feature here onwards.

RESERVED FONTS FOR ENTOURAGE

Fonts not to be deleted in Entourage

As we all know that there are certain fonts that are required in order to run each application. Microsoft Office 2004 is exactly same, at the time of installation it creates a folder and keeps all the fonts in it. They are 77 in numbers and are placed in the following folder:

Home/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts

Note: There are several other font folders the system calls on in addition to the user's font folder. For more on OS X and the font folder hierarchy, see this Apple Knowledge Base article. Fonts in OS X are complex. You need to understand how they work before experimenting with them (and in any case, leave the System font folder – Harddrive/System/Library/Fonts – alone!). Source

As this applications install fonts, without regard to yoy already have on your Mac(not to speak of the fonts that you yourself may install), it is quite common to end up with font folders full of duplicates as well as fonts you don't expect to ever need.

List of MS Office Fonts.

BASIC ENTOURAGE TROUBLESHOOTING

The very Basic Entourage troubleshooting.

1. The very first thing you need to make sure of, is you need to be updated. Not just OS X but also your MS Office suite. Most of the problems are solved by simply keeping the machine updated. Make sure you are using the latest versions for the OS and Microsoft Office.
2. Sometimes just a normal rebooting of your Mac is required. This often fixes many problems.
3. Running Repair Permissions is another standard tool used to repair problems, but it is more effective with the inbuilt OS X applications.
4. The very first recommended step is to delete cache files which is effective many times.
5. Finally you have the option to delete the plist i.e. deleting the preferences files. Doing this the application changes all the settings to default hence solving the issue if it was due to any changes made.

ENTOURAGE TROUBESHOOTING: MANAGING THE DELEGATES

How to manage the delegatory access?

1. Open Entourage and click on Mail icon.
2. On the left side in the folder list, select Calendar, Address book, inbox folder that you want to change access for.
3. Now come on Edit menu, select Folder Properties & then click the tab that says Permissions.
4. Select the user (ofcourse name) whom you want to change the permissions for.
5. Here you will find Permission Level pop-up, define the access level that you want to grant this user.

If you want to know details of delegatory access and study other troubleshooting steps please refer Mactopia.

REMOVING A DELEGATE

How to remove a delegate from Entourage?

1. Launch Entourage and on the Tools menu, click on Accounts and select the Mail tab.
2. Open the Microsoft Exchange account that you want to delete/remove a delegate from.
3. Come on Delegate tab, in My Delegates, select the delegate that you want to remove, and then click Remove.

It was really simple, isn't it?

ENTOURAGE TROUBESHOOTING: HOW TO ADD A DELEGATE

Adding a Deligate (Only for Exchange users)

1. Launch Entourage go to Tools and then Accounts.
2. Open the account that you want to create the delegate for, then select the Delegate tab.
3. Go to My Delegates and select Add.
4. Type the name of the user whom you want to give access to, and try to resolve the name by clicking Find.
5. Select the user and click OK.
6. Now define the permission levels that you want to give to that delegate from Calender, Address book and Inbox.

Note: Before you give access to anyone the user has to add you under Users I am Delegate for.

ENLIVEN ENTOURAGE WITH LIVE HOTMAIL

How to set up Live Hotmail account in Entourage
One of the best feature provided by Windows is to configure Live Hotmail accounts in any mail client and if you own a Mac, luckily you too can do it.
Note: Make sure that all the Live mail accounts have to be configured as POP3 account and the steps are mentioned below. Even if you want to make it easier we can not help you as it is not possible to follow setup assistant.Apart from Setting the account up, there are some other steps that needs to be followed, i.e. a scheduler needs to be created as the mails should be sent and received at an interval of not less than 20 minutes as there can be duplicate mails coming in your inbox.
Configuring the account:
1. Before we start configuring the account, just login to your Live Hotmail ID using your browser and then just logoff.
2. Now lets start with Entourage, on the Entourage menu, goto Account Settings.
3. Click the arrow after New, and then hit Mail.
4. Now if you get Account Setup Assistant, don't take any help from it, rather click Configure Account Manually.
5. Select POP under Account type, and then click OK.
6. now on Account Settings tab, in the Account name box, give a name that you want to be used for this account in Entourage.
7. Where it says Personal Information, type the name that you want to be displayed next to you emails in 'From' section in receiver's inbox and the Hotmail Live e-mail address.
8. Now come under 'Receiving mail', enter your Live Hotmail address and its password.
9. In the box that says POP server, enter pop3.live.com
10 Select Click here for advanced receiving options, and then select This POP service requires a secure connection (SSL) check box.
11. In Send mail, in SMTP server section, type smtp.live.com.
12. Again Click Click here for advanced sending options, & now select SMTP service requires secure connection (SSL) check box. Along with this select the options for SMTP server requires authentication and Use same settings as receiving mail server.
13. Under Account name, uncheck the Include this account in my “Send & Receive All” schedule check box.
14. Come on the Options tab, and under Server options, select the Leave a copy of each message on the server check box and uncheck the Delete messages from the server after they are deleted from this computer check box.
15. Now once you click OK, Windows Live Hotmail account should appear in the Accounts window.
Though you can start sending and receiving mails but I would suggest you to make some more settings as per the next post.

MULTIPLE WINDOWS OPENING IN ENTOURAGE

How to stop Entourage from opening multiple windows automatically

One of my user reported an issue that whenever Entourage wakes up from sleep mode, it opens multiple windows. This took really long till I understood the way to fix this.
If it happens to you, all you have to do is export the data and then import it in a new identity. Once its done you can delete the old identity, but make sure no data is left in the old identity.
The process to export is well explained here.