For some time, I'd been battling with Word 'Unexpectedly Quitting' on me as it launched. The only help I could find was on the Microsoft Support site where it is suggested that Toast, a corrupted Normal template, or corrupted fonts might be the problem.
I had tried deleting font directories (as suggested) and also had replaced all my fonts from a friend's computer - to no avail. On a tip, I created a new user, logged in and found that Word worked perfectly. This meant that the problem was somewhere in Word's user settings for my primary user.
I dug down and found Word keeps two files in
/Users/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/
called Word Font Substitutes and Word Settings (10). I deleted both of these and Word started perfectly, re-generating the files. After closer analysis I discovered that it was Word Settings (10) which had caused the problem.
If you miss things like the old OS 9 Now Menus and you're into customization, you can combine USB Overdrive and Proteron MaxMenus in an interesting way.
MaxMenus lets you assign a keystroke, like a function key, to cause a custom menu to appear. USB Overdrive lets you assign a keystroke to all those extra mouse buttons on things like the MS Intellimouse. If you tell USB Overdrive to "type" the same keystroke that you have assigned to a MaxMenu, what you have is a custom popup menu that appears directly under your cursor when you click the appropriate mouse button!
I use this in two ways: The middle button (wheel) gives me a popup list of running applications; this is a nearly instantaneous way to switch into another running application. Furthermore, if you hold down command-option this autohides all the other applications when you switch. Second, I have button four assigned to show all all mounted volumes; this gives you a complete file browser that appears at the click of a button.
Theoretically, this can give an amazing amount of flexibility, since USB Overdrive can be configured to map different keystrokes to mouse buttons depending on which application you are in. This gives the bewildering prospect of custom popup menus that are application specific. I haven't thought of a use for that yet, but would be interested to hear if others do.
[Editor's note: Cool trick ... I may have to download and register USB Overdrive!]
You know how you can have an icon in your toolbar that brings up your iDisk with no password or "connect to server with the Go menu" business? Well I wanted to have the same functionality on my TiBook connecting to my other systems around the house.
Originally I went through the basic "Go" menu method and made sure that my password is automatically accessed on my Keychain. Then once the server was up, I dragged its icon to the toolbar. The problem was that it reverted to a question mark whenever not connected. Since I reduced my toolbar to icon only, when there are several servers there's no way to tell which is which.
So what I did was make an alias of the mounted server and drag that alias somewhere generic (I stuck it in the general Documents folder at the top level). Then just drag the alias up to the toolbar and, presto! You have the server's original icon retained even after disconnection. Clicking on the icon skips all the other connection windows including password because I put it on the keychain. So in one click I have whichever drive on my other computers pop right up.
One thing is that because you're clicking on the alias, it brings up the drive's contents as a descendent of the alias under whatever directory you are storing them in (ie. in column view). The drive also appears in its usual place at the top of the hierarchy and functions as normal.
as a user who doesn't have nor want a scrollwheel equipped mouse, i was quite happy when finding this one: in every "open file" and "save file" dialog in os x, you can press command-alt for scrolling in the columns by dragging the contents up and down.
at the same time all clicks still select the item you are over, which means that it's very easy to select multiple items which are not viewable at once and would require scrolling to see the next.
this way you don't have to go back to the scrollbar over and over again when choosing multiple items distributed in a folder with many documents or finding a certain item.
[Editor's note: We published a hint on doing this in column view a while back, but no mention was made of the fact that it works in open and save dialogs as well.]
You can create a custom icon by copying any image from a web browser's window [with OmniWeb: Right Click:Copy image to clipboard], and pasting it into the Finder's Show Info window of any file.
Cool.
[Editor's note: This trick is old-hat to many Mac users, but it's probably new to a number of readers here. The expansion of this, of course, is that any image on your clipboard can be pasted to create a custom icon.]
Someone over at the AppleScript Discussion boards grumbled about the lousy black icon that
ScriptMenu.menu displays. He also mentioned that when you click-hold on it, a perfecly good icon shows up ... that got me thinking that maybe somebody accidently swapped the icon and the mask file names. So here's how to switch them:
1) find ScriptMenu.menu on your hard drive.
click-hold on it and select "Show package contents"
navigate to ScriptMenu.menu/Contents/Resources
make backups of these two files (in case you want to put it back the other way or doing the hack causes some unforseen problem): 9likemenumask2.tiff and blackmask2.tiff
swap their filenames
log out, log back in
Now the black mask will be used when you click and hold, and the whitish one will be the default.
[Editor's note: I'm not sure if they're reversed or not; ScriptMenu.menu looks and behaves just like the other menubar additions I have ... but if it bothers you, certainly no harm should come from swapping a couple of TIFF filenames around!]
Like OS X's built in screen savers? Got a bunch of photos or some artwork you'd like to turn into a screen saver? Don't want to switch between different folders using the 'Slide Show' option every time? So make your own screensaver!
OS X's built-in screen savers come in two flavors, bundles with some config files, or a bundle with true executable code inside. We're going to grab one of the first kind, and replace its image resources with our own artwork.
Read the rest of the article for the how-to...
[Editor's note: You should be reasonably comfortable with privileges and the terminal before proceeding. I haven't tried this myself yet, but it seems very straightforward and I'll give it a try later this week.]
When you've got a folder in the dock, and you want to drag an item into that folder, does anybody else find it disconcerting to have that folder MOVE OUT OF THE WAY for a second because it thinks you're trying to add something to the DOCK instead of to that folder?
Well, my absolute favorite Mac OS X tip is if you hold down the COMMAND key when you drag an item to a folder in the dock, the folder will NOT slide out of the way -- it will just sit there waiting for you to drag stuff into it!
In a previously published hint it is stated that you can copy and paste files in the Finder by using contextual menus.
I don't know if it's new to 10.1.3 or if you could do this before, but you can also copy and paste files in the Finder by using the Command+C and Command+V keys similar to Windows.
[Sudo Editor's Note: I am pretty sure this hint was never published before, correct me if I am wrong, I know you will :-). This just goes to show that even the most simple of hints is worth mentioning.]
When you use the Finder's shortcuts often, you may want to change some of them to better suit your needs. For example, I did not like the shortcut for the 'back' button in a Finder window. By default it is command [, and I wanted to change this to command B' which is the current shortcut to hide or show the toolbar.
Read the rest of the article for a quick how-to on editing Finder shortcuts...
[Editor's caution: Although not overly difficult, if you're not yet comfortable with the terminal, root privileges, and UNIX file permissions, I would recommend holding off on this hint. You do not want to mess up key files used by the Finder! I have not tried this hint myself.]
