Top Sites is a curved gallery of thumbnails of the web sites you frequent the most often. When you click on one it expands to fill the screen.
If you see pages with a white star on a blue background in the upper right corner, that means those pages have changed since you last visited them. When you click on one of the “star” pages it will expand to fill the screen, but it will be slightly dimmed until it’s updated from the site. Pages will be automatically added to your Top Sites window as you visit them.
But, as always, its your Mac and you get to decide what goes where, when. You control it all with the Edit Mode. The tool you need is the “Edit” button in the bottom left corner.
Click on that button and you can do any or all of the following things.
Choose a thumbnail size: Click the appropriate button in the lower right corner.
Reposition a thumbnail: Drag a thumbnail to a new position; the others scoot out of the way to make room.
Remove a site: Click on the “X” inside the thumbnail and the thumbnail disappears from the Top Sites window. Everything else realigns.
Thumbtack a site: Click on the “thumbtack” inside the thumbnail and your thumbnail will always stay right where you put it. The button turns blue when it is set.
Force-Add sites: With Top Sites open and in Edit mode, open a second window (not a tab). In the second window, go to the site you want. Grab the little icon (favicon) in front of the URL and drag it into the Top Sites window. It will automatically be thumbtacked where you release it, but you can move it if you wish.
Personally, I really like Top Sites. Once I figured out how to use it that is.
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( 0 / 0 )If you worry about loosing, or just keeping track of, your email messages, there is something you can do to back them up. You can do this even if you have an IT department or are connected to a server system. It won't interfere with anything else that you have in place.
This also works if you want to save a large number of older email messages "somewhere" without having them take up room on your hard drive.
This is for those of us who use the Mail app for our email.
Open Mail. In the far left column you will see a list of your mail boxes. You may only have one that is titled Inbox. If you have several email addresses that are automatically routed to Mail, then you may see some sub mailbox accounts if you click on the small arrow next to the Inbox.
You can archive all of your email messages at once, or do individual email address mailboxes, one at a time.
Click once on the box you want to archive. Select the Mailbox Menu and then select "Archive Mailbox". Mail will create an archive file of that mailbox that you can put on a USB thumb drive or store on a CD, DVD, or server.
If you delete the originals and later decide you want to restore them, you can do so by inserting the thumb drive, CD, etc. and choose "Import Mailboxes" from the File Menu.
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( 3 / 5 )How many emails do you have in your Mail account? 500? 1,500? 5,000? It can be very frustrating to try and find a specific email when you have a lot of saved messages. Some people save all the relevant messages that they get so finding a specific message can take time. The old needle in the haystack scenario.
The upper left corner of your Mail window has a search field, but you can only put in one search criteria.
Here is one way you can search quickly. Create a Smart Mailbox and enter the criteria you are looking for and Mail will search for you.
A Smart Mailbox automatically puts a copy of any message that meets your set criteria into a Mailbox (folder). I have one for the software Bento. If I send or receive any message that has Bento in the content or in the subject line, a copy automatically goes into the Bento folder.
To create a Smart Folder just open Mail and select Mail Box > New Smart Folder. A window opens that lets you set your criteria.
You can set several levels of criteria if you wish. In this example I have set two.
As soon as you set your criteria and click on the OK button, the Smart Mailbox will show up in the left column and all relevant email messages will be enclosed.
You might note in this example that I have 3 messages in the Bento Smart Mailbox that I have not read. This makes sure something does not slip by me.
The whole point of all of this is that if you need to find something fast you can create a Smart Mailbox specific to whatever you need and Mail will search all your messages for you and put them in the mailbox. They you can search quickly through those few messages to find the one you really need. If needed, you can even adjust your search criteria by editing your Smart Mailbox. Click on the mailbox and select Mailbox > Edit Smart Mailbox.
If it solves your problem and you don't need it any more, just click on the mailbox and select Mailbox > Delete Mailbox.
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( 3 / 5 )I have my new computer - a 15" MacBook Pro. It is quite lovely and works like a charm. All my stuff ( why do I have so much stuff?) got transferred over thanks to my talented daughter. Some things I had to download again, but following my own advice I had copies of all my software registration codes so while it took a bit of time it was no great hardship.
Meanwhile, my beloved G4 was repaired and passed on to a hardworking young student who had no computer and no chance of getting one. I was able to load back up the purchased copy of Leopard since my new one came with a copy and I was also able to give her iLife 08 and iWork 08. All legal copies.
So we have two happy people now. All this to explain where I have been. Back to today's topic.
Some documents get saved as Read Only. Microsoft and PDF documents will frequently do this. Even if it is your own document you may get an error message when you try to make changes. The error message will tell you you don't have the authority to make changes because the document is "read only"
You can check the status of any document by right-clicking on it and selecting “Get Info” from the menu that opens. Look down at the bottom of the window that opens to “Sharing & Permissions” and you will see what is permitted for the document. It will probably say “read only” somewhere. Try unlocking the lock with your administrative password and clicking on the small arrows in the Privileges column. You may be able to affect the changes you need to make that way.
If that doesn’t work, try saving the document with a new name or in another format. That should certainly solve the problem for you.
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( 3 / 14 )If you ever need to insert a CD into your computer to help solve a problem, but it won’t go in because the computer won’t turn on because it won’t go in..... you get the picture. There is an easy fix to getting the CD in the computer.
Gently put the CD in the slot as far as it will go. Then hold down the “C” key while you start the computer. Your CD should slide in the rest of the way on its own when the computer starts up.
If that doesn’t solve the problem you probably need to get professional help.
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