But this is something any one can do if you follow the steps carefully; and if you don't happen to have a certified Apple technician in your family who really likes your chicken pie and/or banana pudding, it may save you a trip to the repair shop.
The presenting problem is one specific application starts acting weird when everything else is working OK. And this isn't limited to third party applications. It can be Safari, or iChat or any of your regular Apple applications as well.
Deleting the plist(s)
Before you try this make sure you have a copy of the registration code for your application. Sometimes, not often, you will have to re-enter the registration code after deleting the plist(s).
This problem can frequently be solved by deleting the plist(s) that are specific to that application. The plists are part of the preferences and sometimes they just get corrupted.
Make sure your application is not open.
Open a Finder Window > your Home folder > Library.
Scroll down until you see the start of a long list of plist items and find the one(s) that match the application that is giving you trouble.
Drag it/them to your Desktop. If the file(s) turn out to be the culprit you can erase it/them by dragging them to the trash and emptying the trash.
DO NOT remove the com.apple.mail.plist without backing up your Mail folder in the user library. You could end up losing all of your mail.
Open your application. New plist(s) will automatically be created and your problem may well be solved. If it is not, you can drag the original plist file(s) back to their original location.
I have used this technique a half dozen times and it has solved the problem every time.
Following are two examples of what you need to look for when searching for plist files.
In this example there are 4 plists for iChat. All 4 would have to be deleted.
com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
com.apple.iChat.plist
com.apple.iChat.SubNet.plist
com.apple.iChatAgent.plist
In this example the name of the developer comes before the name of the actual application.
com.novadevelopmentPrintExplosion.plist
Nancy
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( 3.1 / 44 )One of my all time favorite utilities is Grab. It comes with OS X and it is free. It lets you quickly take pictures of all or part of your computer screen.
The really nice feature is Timed Screen. You can actually select a portion of your application that you want to point to, set the timer, and move your cursor to point to that specific item before the picture snaps.
I use Grab so often that I keep the icon for it on my Dock.
To use it, Open Grab (located in the Utilities folder which you should find in your Applications folder).
Choose a command from the Capture menu. (selection, Window, Screen, or Timed Screen).
Follow the directions for the task you have selected and save your finished product. This is a great tool for training and/or for asking questions.
One note, if you use Timed Screen you will get an image of your entire desk top. You may want to do a second Grab action and narrow your image to just the area you are interested in, as I did in the example above.
Nancy
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( 3 / 83 )Somewhat of an unsung hero in the arsenal of tools included with OS X
is the DigitalColor Meter which allows you to precisely determine the color
specifications of any image displayed on the Macintosh screen.
In the following example, I used the DigitalColor Meter to determine the exact color of the nose of the rag doll to obtain the RGB (red, green, and blue) color levels. I point the pointer to the exact area that I want the color meter to measure as exemplified in the example.
The DigitalColor Meter panel contains a large square which shows the area
being considered, the center of that area being marked by the cursor and a small
square which shows the color obtained by averaging the colors shown in the large
square. The large square can be set to cover an area of varying number of pixels
and this can help to determine an appropriate color to represent an area which
is multi-colored. If you look closely at the screenshot you can see that there is
a variance, albeit subtle, in the included colors.
DigitalColor Meter gives the user the option of choosing from a number of
commonly used color specifications including the ubiquitous RGB and CMYK.
Once you becomes a user of Digital Color Meter you will truly wonder how you got along without it. Especially if you make your own gift cards, brochures, web pages, newsletters, etc. and are a stickler for matching things perfectly.
Oh yeah, you will find it in the Applications folder. Choose Utilities > Digital Color Meter. If you are running OS X you will have it. I keep it on my Dock because it use it frequently.
Nancy
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( 2.9 / 94 )When entering information into a series of fields or text boxes most everyone knows that you can use the Tab key to move forward from field to field (or box to box) to enter information. But you can also move backward when necessary by holding down the Shift key along with the Tab key.
Think about how many time you have been sending an email and decided to add (or remove) a person in the recipient list. With this trick you don't have to stop and use the mouse to get back to the field you want.
This works on the internet, Mail, and my personal favorite, FileMaker Pro. Try it on any application on your Mac that involves fields or text boxes.
Nancy
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( 2.9 / 57 )If your Mac starts running slow it could mean you have filled up your hard drive. Hard drive space means the space that is consumed by applications, photos, music, documents, etc.
Here is how you can check it.
Find the hard drive icon on your desktop and click on it once.
Right click (or hold down the control key while you click if you have a one button mouse) and a menu will open.
Select "Get Info"
You will find a line that gives you the capacity of your Mac and another that gives you the available space remaining on your machine.
Nancy
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( 3.1 / 57 )
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