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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds Apps
I wish to offer a specific hint that I created for Microsoft Office preferences and tailored to preferences for other applications. When Word, Excel or Entourage gets corrupted and nothing else seems to work, trashing a number of preferences for the application plus some for Office, itself, may solve the problem. But it's hard to remember when reconstructing the several pages of preferences for each Office application which boxes you had checked and what choices you had made in selecting other prefs. To spare myself the extra time (and errors) of pondering over each choice, I did the following:
  1. Opened each preference and took a screen shot.
  2. Created an Entourage Note for each Office 2004 application (For those who do not use Entourage, any software for saving and retrieving notes, such as iData 2, will do.)
  3. While looking at a given screenshot, typed in and boldfaced the name so I could easily spot it
  4. Entered relevant info on choices made (I did not bother with unchecked boxes, for example).
You could stop with just making screenshots and saving them in a folder. But because I change preferences from time to time, I decided to invest the extra time in creating the Entourage Notes rather than making a new screenshot each time. It's also faster for me to access the note by searching for a combination of "Word" and "Preference" in Entourage Notes. Should Entourage itself be corrupted, I copied the note on Entourage preferences into iData 2, where I can do an even faster search with less steps.

I started with Office 2004 because of the hundreds of preferences it involves. But the same system works well for other programs in which one has done more than select default preferences.
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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds | 9 comments | Create New Account
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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: billbarstad on Dec 28, '04 01:07:14PM

This is a hint? Doesn't everyone need to do this sometimes?



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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: TvE on Dec 28, '04 01:26:19PM

How about just taking a backup copy of the user folder when everything is A -OK then restore whatever pref's that get screwed up, or is that "cheating"...?



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not a hint
Authored by: mael on Dec 29, '04 04:09:03AM

I second this.
Call it "common sense" or something like it, but not a hint.
Or would "I cleaned up my mousepad after it got dirty" qualify as well?



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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: PCheese on Dec 28, '04 04:37:24PM

Or even just making a backup copy of the Preferences folder in your Library folder...
Mine is about 20MB, and it saves preferences for every application I have. It takes less than ten seconds to open your home folder, open the Library folder, select the Preferences folder, and hit command-d. Now imagine the time and disk space it would take to make thousands of screenshots for all your applications...



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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: Norm Nager on Dec 28, '04 08:05:50PM

The problem in copying over ALL preferences, especially when the time comes to erase and do a clean install, is that the preferences folder may contain corrupted preferences.



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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: Norm Nager on Dec 28, '04 08:23:03PM

1. I only keep the screenshots long enough to extract salient information from them. 2. The hint is intended for applications--such as Office 2004--with a number of variables involved when one suspects corruption of preferences.



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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: TimBonnici on Dec 30, '04 07:29:34PM

Is it really necessary to get so militant when you don't find a hint useful? By all means, suggest alternatives to the posted hint but just commenting that it's, "Duh! SOOO obvious" creates an unnecessarily aggressive atmosphere within the MacOSXHints community. Everybody should feel free to contribute whatever they can. If you don't find a hint useful then why not just skip over it?



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Record preference settings for easier future rebuilds
Authored by: voldenuit on Dec 31, '04 07:56:57AM

I would -in a friendly way- second the opinion of those who said early on, that "hinting" to screenshoot pref-dialogs rather than backing up the pref-files once you've set them up the way you want, is probably not a hint at all.
Short of taking notes with pen and paper, I would have a hard time to figure out a clumsier method.

And stating that it is +way+ below the usually extremely high level of sophistication and usefulness is no more than constructive criticism and I am sure that Rob would be the first to say that feedback is helpful to keep the hints as good as they are.

For the sake of peace and harmony, a paragraph dealing with the question how productive applications, that tend to clobber their preferences often enough to warrant such a backup, are anyway, has been omitted.



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Scripting for back up
Authored by: drdarrow on Jan 01, '05 02:21:17PM
I am not an AppleScripter by any stretch, but I have figured out anough to write a script that does some useful backups when I emember to run the script (which at worst I do once a month). If someone can re-write this to automate the "set-up" that would be cool. Any usedful additions I have overlooked would be appreciated, too.

Set-up:
On another Hard Drive create the following folder,

Back-ups
...into which you place the following empty folders
Copy of AddressBook
Copy of Application Support
Copy of Favorites
Copy of iTunes
Copy of Mail
Copy of Preferences
Copy of Safari
These are used to prevent an error the first time you run it. After running the script, these will be full.

Then I run this script, which I have named Regular Back-up

tell application "Finder"
	copy folder "Macintosh HD:Users:david:Library:Application Support:AddressBook" to folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups"
	delete folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Copy of AddressBook"
	set name of folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:AddressBook" to "Copy of AddressBook"
	
	copy folder "Macintosh HD:Users:david:Library:Mail" to folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups"
	delete folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Copy of Mail"
	set name of folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Mail" to "Copy of Mail"
	
	copy folder "Macintosh HD:Users:david:Library:Preferences" to folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups"
	delete folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Copy of Preferences"
	set name of folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Preferences" to "Copy of Preferences"
	
	copy folder "Macintosh HD:Users:david:Library:Safari" to folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups"
	delete folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Copy of Safari"
	set name of folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Safari" to "Copy of Safari"
	
	copy folder "Macintosh HD:Users:david:Library:Application Support" to folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups"
	delete folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Copy of Application Support"
	set name of folder "Macintosh HD 2:Back-ups:Application Support" to "Copy of Application Support"

	empty trash

end tell
Of course, if you use this script, change the names of the Hard drives to match your system, and change the user name david to the user name that is correct for your use.

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