a few little queries...

[martinchivers]

CMD H, is not wording on Outlook. As far as I can tell it minimizes all other programs.

Shutdown procedure. I occasionally have an issue when shutting down. During the cause of the day, I will have up to 10 different programs running. These are not “closed” in the windows sense. When going home at the end of the day, I go force quit & shut each down, one at a time. I check things like Photoshop have no images open & that none of the programs are processing anything. However, sometimes when opening excel or word (after a reboot) I get a dialog that tells me that its recovered an unsaved doc – why is that, when I (presumably) saved anything prior to closing before shut down?

Defrag?....do I need to defrag, my hard drives, if so how do I do that.

Safari…..do I need to delete temporary internet files? If so, how do I do that, maybe I don’t need to.

Photoshop – the background on my CS5, is mid grey, which is OK, but on my old PC, I had this set up as Black, that was done, however from the windows setup itself, which obviously the mac does not have. Is it possible to set that up on the mac?

 

[Makosuke]

CMD H, is not wording on Outlook. As far as I can tell it minimizes all other programs.

Can't help with this one--maybe somebody else. There should also be a "Hide [x]" menu item under the Outlook menu, though--see if it's there and if it shows a different shortcut by it.

Shutdown procedure. I occasionally have an issue when shutting down. During the cause of the day, I will have up to 10 different programs running. These are not “closed” in the windows sense. When going home at the end of the day, I go force quit & shut each down, one at a time. I check things like Photoshop have no images open & that none of the programs are processing anything. However, sometimes when opening excel or word (after a reboot) I get a dialog that tells me that its recovered an unsaved doc – why is that, when I (presumably) saved anything prior to closing before shut down?

I've never personally seen that dialog unless Word (etc) crashed or was force quit. When you say "force quit & shut each down", do you mean that's the menu you're using? If you're selecting "Force Quit" from the apple menu, then you're doing the exact wrong thing--that's only to be used when the app is frozen and won't respond to any user input. What you actually want to do is either right-click/command-click/click-and-hold on the application's icon in the Dock and select "Quit" from the menu that appears, or, alternately, click the application to bring it to the front, select the application main menu (it should be the application name, closest to the Apple menu), and select "Quit" from the bottom, or bring the application to the front and just hit command-q.

If you've been quitting them properly and still get that pop-up, maybe Word is crashing on Quit--it's been known to do that. Make sure it and the OS are fully up to date (run the Office and OS updater to check), and try repairing permissions using Disk Utility and see if that helps. If not, you might try deleting all Word/Office prefs and/or reinstalling.

Defrag?....do I need to defrag, my hard drives, if so how do I do that.

Almost certainly no. OSX does a moderate amount of defragmentation on the fly, and HFS+ isn't prone to fragmentation to begin with. You can find a hundred other threads on this, but outside of edge cases involving very large video files, nearly-full drives, or moving large amounts of media around, it's rarely necessary or useful.

Safari…..do I need to delete temporary internet files? If so, how do I do that, maybe I don’t need to.

Under normal use, I don't see why you'd bother, but if you feel the need for some reason, there's an "Empty Cache" item under the Safari menu, and the "Reset Safari" item above it can be used to clean out specific caches (web page icons, for example).

Photoshop – the background on my CS5, is mid grey, which is OK, but on my old PC, I had this set up as Black, that was done, however from the windows setup itself, which obviously the mac does not have. Is it possible to set that up on the mac?

Photoshop -> Preferences -> Interface -> "Standard Screen Mode Color", "Full Scren With Menus Color" and "Full Screen Color". Set each from Gray to Black, or whatever custom color you prefer. Alternately, if you don't want to run PS in fullscreen mode or with oversized windows, you can just set your Desktop background to something dark, hide other apps, and keep the windows sized to just show the image itself.

 

[martinchivers]

Thanks

Wow! Thanks very much, for all that. I will work through all those things on the iMac tomorrow. Great help! Martin

 

[Makosuke]

CMD H, is not wording on Outlook. As far as I can tell it minimizes all other programs.

I forgot that I have Outlook installed at work, since I never use it.

I just checked, and Outlook 2011 has a "Hide" item, and the command-h shortcut seems to work just fine for me. It's possible for applications to override the hide keyboard shortcut, but unless you did something custom in Outlook it looks like it's fine by default.

Try again, or maybe try restarting the computer if you haven't recently--no idea why it's not working for you.

 

[martinchivers]

right. At work now & keenly worked through these points! Firstly THANKS VERY MUCH AGAIN!

I realise I have made a big bobo, in using "force quit"! Will use cmd-q from now on. I assume that if doing that, the program would ask first, regarding doc/excel changes, just haven't tested that yet.

OUTLOOK - cmd h, intermittently working, god knows why that is.

PHOTOSHOP, I have made those changes, (quit) & restarted program, but thats not worked. I then set each to "custom" & made the custom colour black. That to did not work, so thats still unresolved.

thanks. Martin

 

[dusk007]

You don't have to quit them at all.
a) Most people don't shut of their notebook even overnight. The difference in Power draw between Standby and off is so marginal that it really doesn't matter. Even if you need that 0.4W is too much I would just hibernate the machine.
b) If you just shut it down. The system will try to CMD+Q on its own all open apps and stops if one App reports that there is still some unsaved stuff. Try it in most cases shutting down one app at a time is just a waste of time.

 

[martinchivers]

thanks. Been talking to a mate this morning, he said the same. Will just "sleep" tonight. Did it once before, but when I got in next morning, the mac was up & running....burning electric - bright eyed & bushy tailed, but god knows why! Should have been asleep!

 

[Makosuke]

I realise I have made a big bobo, in using "force quit"! Will use cmd-q from now on. I assume that if doing that, the program would ask first, regarding doc/excel changes, just haven't tested that yet.

Yes; force is exactly what it sounds like, and is an absolute last resort. With a proper, regular quit, you will ALWAYS be asked if you want to save any unsaved documents currently open.

PHOTOSHOP, I have made those changes, (quit) & restarted program, but thats not worked. I then set each to "custom" & made the custom colour black. That to did not work, so thats still unresolved.

Are we talking about the same thing? When in Photoshop, if you drag the corner of a window to make it larger than the current image, you by default get a grey area around it. "Standard Screen Mode Color" changes that color, and on my CS5 it does so immediately (the option doesn't exist on my CS3 here at work). If you're changing that setting and the color isn't changing, something is wrong with your Photoshop install.

The other two options, "Full Screen With Menus Color" and "Full Screen Color", only affect the background you get when you put Photoshop into fullscreen mode, where the desktop is not visible behind Photoshop.

If you're talking about the color of the desktop background you see behind Photoshop, that's a system-level setting changed via the System Preferences app (opened by the item under the Apple menu). The Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane lets you choose the desktop background.

Will just "sleep" tonight. Did it once before, but when I got in next morning, the mac was up & running....burning electric - bright eyed & bushy tailed, but god knows why! Should have been asleep!

A Mac can be woken up by something connected via USB telling it to wake (for example, hitting a key on the keyboard, or occasionally a misbehaving device), or hitting the power button. There is also a setting in the Energy Saver preference pane to tell it to wake automatically at a specific time of day.

Assuming nobody hit a key or plugged/unplugged a USB device, and that it's not set to wake automatically, the most likely cause is if the computer is hooked via USB to a UPS and the power flickered--the UPS will send a wake signal to wake the computer so that, if the power remains out, it will be able to shut itself down when the battery gets low. I keep my UPS disconnected at home because there's a power glitch about every couple of days enough to cause the UPS to notice, and so it was constantly waking the attached iMac up.

 

[martinchivers]

Thanks again. Yes it is the actual program itself (not the frame around the image). Will try to change it tomorrow.
I have left it in sleep mode tonight! So fingers crossed it will still be asleep when I get there in the morning. I realise all sorts of stuff can make it wake up would it wake up if it received an email for instance? It's got loads of kit hanging off it, any number of things really, but if it wakes up, surely it should put itself back after 10 minutes or whatever.

I WILL NOT corse quit again....PROMISE! Unless it's necessary!

 

[Makosuke]

I realise all sorts of stuff can make it wake up would it wake up if it received an email for instance? It's got loads of kit hanging off it, any number of things really, but if it wakes up, surely it should put itself back after 10 minutes or whatever.

Receiving emails, or anything else software-related, will not wake the computer once it's asleep.

Only three things can: A wake signal from a connected hardware device, the automatic wake timer, and if you have the capability enabled a network wake ping.

The network signal is a specialized thing that won't be happening unless you've explicitly enabled it and have another device on the network explicitly sending a wake signal, and the automatic wake timer will only do anything if you explicitly configure it.

Which is to say than in at least 99.9% of all cases the only thing that's going to wake your Mac is connected hardware. If something's waking it up when it shouldn't, it's going to be one of your attached devices, and if there are a lot that increases the chance of something misbehaving and poking it awake. That could also explain why it's not going back to sleep--again, the main cause of failure to sleep automatically is connected hardware.

 

[martinchivers]

thanks. tried it twice, now & both times its still been asleep, when returning to it - so all good!

Thanks!

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a few more things........
is it possible to add an icon into finder toolbar (other than the ones shown when right clicking on toolbar & going to "customise toolbar) I would like....properties, copy & paste.
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When Outlook is minimised, sometimes, when it receives an email, it will pop up over the program being used, can this be stopped?
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I havent resolved the grey background issue with CS5. I went to system properties, but that would have changed my desktop image. Which I do not want to do. When I installed photoshop initially, there was NO background at all (just the desktop underneath, which I hated! The grey is a million times better than that, but would prefer black.

any help, much appreciated!

 

[martinchivers]

I used to have photoshop set up on my PC, whereby when opening photoshop itself, Bridge opened as well. I have not been able to do that on the mac, is it possible?

 

[Makosuke]

is it possible to add an icon into finder toolbar (other than the ones shown when right clicking on toolbar & going to "customise toolbar) I would like....properties, copy & paste.

Not by default, no. There's probably a 3rd party tool that will let you do something along those lines, but I'm not familiar with one.

When Outlook is minimised, sometimes, when it receives an email, it will pop up over the program being used, can this be stopped?

You could check its preferences and see if there's something that looks like it'll affect that behavior. If not, then no, probably not.

I havent resolved the grey background issue with CS5.

To make sure we're talking about the same thing, the first minute and a half of this video demonstrates how to change the color:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPC31uMlvw

If that's not working for you, there's something wrong with your Photoshop install--either try Adobe tech support (you certainly paid enough for the software to be owed some help), or try reinstalling it.

I used to have photoshop set up on my PC, whereby when opening photoshop itself, Bridge opened as well. I have not been able to do that on the mac, is it possible?

No easy way with Photoshop that I'm aware, but you can open Bridge from a PS menu, and/or have Bridge launch automatically when you log into your account, at which point you can hide or minimize it until you need it.

Alternately, if you add the Bridge icon to the Dock right below the Photoshop icon, you can just click both at the same time, and you get basically the same effect at the cost of an extra maybe half-second of effort.