Adding US Holidays to iCal

In previous versions of iCal, you had to subscribe to any extra calendars you anted, like US holidays. Now, it’s an easy click.

1. In iCal, click on the Calendar menu
2. Click on Preferences
3. Click on the General icon
4. Put a check mark to show US Holidays
5. If you enter people’s birthdays in your Contacts and also want them to appear in your calendars, click Birthdays also

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

iCal–Where’s the Weekly View?

iOS 7 gives you choices for year, month and day, but how do you see an entire week?
Turn your iPhone or iPad sideways!

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Moving a Document from iCloud Back to Your Mac

If you use Pages, Numbers or Keynote, Apple assumes you want to save your documents to iCloud, which is why the SAVE box defaults to iCloud. If you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to accidentally save something there.

To move a document from iCloud to your Mac:

1. Open Pages (or Numbers or Keynote, whichever applies)
2. Click on iCloud
3. You should see the document
4. Open it
5. From the file menu, choose MOVE TO
6. Click on Where and click on Desktop
7. Save

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Yet Another iOS 7.1 Has Fixes and Features

Last week Apple released a new version for iPad and iPhone users. iOS 7. In addition to fixing bugs, iOS7 has a few improvements that are actually worth the upgrade.

For those of us who wished for a darker keyboard, Apple listened. Now, in Settings, in Accessibility, if you choose Bold Text, it will also replace the current keyboard with one that has thicker, darker letters.

Also in iOS7, the monthly calendar view has a new icon – a rectangle with two horizontal lines under it. Tap it to see that familiar list of an individual day’s events.

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Zooming in iPhoto

The ZOOM slider in the bottom left of iPhoto does two different things, depending on what screen you are in.

When you are browsing your Library of Photos (as photos, events, Faces) moving the slider will affect the size of the thumbnails and how many pictures you can see at a time.

When you are editing a photo or have double-clicked the photo to be bigger, the ZOOM slider can be used to zoom in on an area of the photo. This is especially helpful if you are using the Retouch tool for fine editing.

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Two Ways to Delete Photos

There is no quick way to delete a lot of photos on your iPad or iPhone. You have to select them individually, then choose to put them in the trash.

Tap Photos
Tap the Albums
Find where the pictures are that you want to delete
Tap Select in the top right corner
Tap as many photos as you want at a time
Tap the Trash icon, top left

If you are wanting to delete all of your photos, connect your mobile device to your Mac and follow the online prompts in iPhoto to delete all.

Be sure you have transferred all of the photos to your Mac first if you want to keep them.

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Customize Your Screen Saver

When your computer is idle for a period of time, you can choose to have your favorite photos appear on the screen.

To set your Screen Saver:

1. From the Apple menu choose System Preferences
2. Click on the Desktop & Screen Saver icon
3. Click on the Screen Saver tab
4. In the left column, choose one of the styles. It will show a preview of what it will do
5. Click next to Source to choose the most recently added photos or, to access a specific album or event in iPhoto, choose Photo Library
6. Click on the desired album or Event
7. choose shen it should start

BONUS TIP:

If you don’t want to wait for the Screen Saver to activate, set a Hot Corner
In the Screen Saver set up, click on Hot Corners in the bottom right
It shows the four corners of a screen
Choose the corner you use least often, probably the bottom left or right
To try it, move your mose/cursor all the way into that chosen corner, off the screen. let go and wait a moment while the screen saver begins!

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Change Your Wallpaper

As fun as it is to have a favorite photo on your iPhone and iPad lock screen, it’s quite refreshing to change the images every once in a while.

1. Tap Settings
2. Tap Wallpapers and Brightness
3. Know whether you are changing the lock screen on the home screen (you might choose a less busy image for the home screen so you can still read the screen)
4. Navigate to find the photo is that you want to use
5. If you choose one of Apple’s wallpapers, know that Dynamic will use more battery power than Still
6. Choose the photo, choose which screen to apply it to
7. Enjoy!

 

 

Signatures in Mail

A signature can automatically appear at the bottom of your email. It can be your name, your contact information, even a favorite quote. You can create several different signatures and choose which one you want for a particular email.

To create a signature:

1. First, create a new email message so you have a place to type

2. Type everything you want to appear, including choosing the font, size, color

3. Highlight it all

4. From the Edit menu, choose Copy

5. Then, under the Mail menu, choose Preferences

6. Click on the Signatures icon

7. Click the “+” sign at the bottom of the middle column to create a new signature

8. Title it in the middle column where it is highlighted in blue

9. In the right column, delete the text that appears there

10. From the Edit menu, choose Paste

Your typed text will appear.

To actually USE the signature, you have to now assign it to an email account.

1. Drag that named signature from the middle column to on top of the email address in the left column that you want to use it with.

2. Click on that email address and, at the bottom, under Choose Signature, decide whether you always want that signature to appear or, if you choose None, then you can select the signature when you want to use it in a particular email.

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Signatures in Mail

By default, every email you send says “Sent from my iPhone or iPad.” You can remove this and even add your own signature. You can even have a different signature for each of your email accounts.

1. From the Home screen, tap on Settings

2. Scroll down and tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars

3. Scroll all the way down and tap Signature

4. Choose All Accounts if you want to use the same signature for all of your email accounts

5. Click Per Account if you want to create unique signatures for each email account

6. Delete the existing text and type what you’d like it to say

7. There is no need to Save it, just tap back to Mail and you’ll see that, next to Signature, it now shows either the text you typed or the number of how many email accounts you have

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Too Many Emails? Unsubscribe!

I have clients with more than 3000 emails in their inbox. Yes, this can slow things down. Yes, it makes it hard to find what’s important. But more than that, it often causes some anxiety.

People think the goal is to have a Zero inbox.

Really the goal is to only receive mail from people you want to hear from.

You can start by unsubscribing from all of the newsletters you receive and do not read. You can always get the information on their website. You can re-sign up if you find that you miss it.

Take 10 or 15 minutes a day and go through all of the subscription emails you receive. When’s the last time you actually READ them? Do you even resonate with the content? Unsubscribe from anything that you haven’t opened in the last six months. goes for stores, catalogs, magazines, newsletters.

In fact, unsubscribing from unwanted emails is much easier than canceling catalogs that get delivered to your house.

1. Open an email you no longer want to receive.

2. Scroll down to the bottom and look for a link to UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE SETTINGS. Follow the prompts to remove your name from their mailing list.

3. Then delete the email from your inbox.

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Emoticons: Part 2

If you tried typing those fun characters and didn’t see the globe on the keyboard, my apologies. I forgot to tell you how to set it up:

1. Tap Settings
2. Tap General
3. Tap Keyboard
4. Tap Keyboards
5. Add a Keyboard
6. Choose Emoji
7. Close Settings

Now, anytime you want to type a fun character:

1. On the keyboard, tap the world globe icon to the left of the space bar
2. Choose the characters you want
3. Tap the globe again to return to your regular keyboard

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Scroll Bar Secrets

The scroll bar, on the right side of every window, allows you to move up and down the window to see the contents.

Dragging the scroll bar moves you fast, sometimes too fast. But Dragging the scroll button is the quickest way to go all the way to the top or bottom of a window.

Clicking the up and down arrows at the bottom of the scroll bar will move you a line at a time. This is great if you are reading a document line by line or looking at individual photos.

In the System Preferences, under Appearance, you can set the Scroll Bar to either jump to the next page or to the spot that’s clicked.

This is handy when you are scanning a document or wanting to quickly navigate through a section of your photos.

This is also where you can set to Always Show Scroll Bars, instead of having to hover the cursor to reveal them.

BONUS: In Safari, pressing the Space Bar scrolls the window down a screen at a time. Shift plus Space Bar scrolls the window up a screen at a time.

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Quick Scroll to the Top

When you reach the bottom of an article, or an email or the news feed in FaceBook, instead of scrolling all the way back to the top:

Just double tap in the very top black horizontal menu space where the time and battery are displayed and you’ll zip right up to the top of the screen.

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Managing Passwords

With all of the user names and passwords that you have to remember, how do you keep track of them all?

I highly recommend that you keep a Master List, on paper, in a notebook and make sure it is updated regularly.

But this isn’t convenient for travelers or users of more than one device.

There are online services that will store your passwords for you BUT, who are they? How long will they be in business? How secure is their site?

Your Mac has always stored saved passwords in Keychain Access, an app found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. To reveal a saved password, you just need to know the master password for the computer.

Mavericks and iOS7 now give you the option of storing all of your Passwords on Apple’s iCloud Keychain.

To activate the iCloud Keychain,

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click on iCloud
3. Check the box next to Keychains
4. You will be required to create a four-digit password
5. BE SURE TO WRITE THIS PASSWORD DOWN ON YOUR MASTER LIST!
6. Activate the Keychain on your iPad and iPhone also

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

iCloud Keychain

The new iOS7 allows you to save your passwords on Apple’s iCloud. To activate this feature,

1. Tap Settings
2. Tap iCloud
3. Tap Keychain
4. Follow the prompts to set up your password

 

 

Make Things Bigger On The Desktop

Did you know that you can make the text AND icons bigger on the Desktop?

1. From the Finder click the View menu

2. Choose Show View Options

3. You can drag the top slider to make the icons bigger or smaller

4. Change the text size

5. You can even reposition the label text from the bottom to the side

6. Click a check mark next to Show Icon Preview and you’ll see a thumbnail of all of your jpgs

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Contacts and Calendars Not Updated?

Your Contacts and Calendars will sync whenever you are connected to wifi.
If you know there have been changes and you don’t see them on your iPhone or iPad, you can manually Refresh to get the newest changes.

In Calendars
Tap Calendars at the top left
Pull the screen down (iOS7)
or tap the clockwise arrow at the bottom of the screen (pre iOS7)

In Contacts
Tap Groups in the top left
Pull down the screen

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Safari’s New Home Screen

Even if you haven’t upgraded to Mavericks, you may have notices some changes in Safari version 6.1.

If your home page now shows icons of Top Sites, you can change it to your familiar home page.

1. Under the Safari menu, choose Preferences

2. Click on the General icon

3. Next to each line, choose your preference for what opens when

4. This is also where you can set things to download to the Desktop so you can find them and file them

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Full Screen

It’s great to use the space of your entire computer screen, especially if you’re watching a movie or surfing the web.

Many of my clients activate the full screen mode without realizing it, and then wonder how to get back to seeing their menus, the Dock, etc.

To get into full screen mode, click the diagonal arrows in the top right corner of the window.

To return to your regular screen, hover your mouse at the very top of the screen where the menu bar should be, and click on the diagonal arrows again.

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Navigating Windows in Safari

The iOS7 version of Safari is slightly different on the iPad and iPhone. On your iPhone, recently visited pages are stored and available by tapping the icon with two squares on the bottom right. Press the X in the left corner of each page to close it.

On the iPad, web pages open as tabs across the top. Tap the small gray X next to any page title to remove it.

Google searching is now available in any Safari window by tapping in the address bar at the top, once to activate it, then tap the small X at the right end of the address to clear it so you can type in your new search criteria.

When no page is selected and all previous pages are closed, you will see square icons of websites that are in your Mac’s Bookmark Favorites bar.

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Sending Emails to a Group of People

If you send the same email to the same group of people all the time (ie. a book club, a board of directors, your family), instead of choosing each person each time, you can create a Group.

(The steps may vary if you are running Lion or Snow Leopard)

To Create a Group:

1. From the File menu in Contacts, choose New Group

2. A new Untitled Group appears

3. Without moving or clicking your mouse, type the name of the group then press the Return key to lock it in

4. Click on All Contacts at the top of the list to see everyone in your Address Book

5. Scroll through the list to select the people who belong in the group

You can drag each person, one at a time, to the left column then up and on top of the Group name

OR

Click on one name, hold down the Command key and continue selecting others, then drag one of the selected names on top of the group and they will all go

Be sure to drag the name left first and then up, or you may accidentally highlight the entire list of people.

To Send an Email to the Group:

In the BCC field (so that everyone remains anonymous), type the name of the group
Press the TAB key and it will fill in

If you want to see the names of the people in the group, in Mail, under Preferences, click on the Viewing icon and choose it

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

iOS7 Calendar Solution

With all of the changes and new features in iOS7, there is one glaring change that has some Calendar users up in arms.

If you view your calendar in the Month mode, iOS7 has removed the helpful list at the bottom that shows all of a day’s appointments.

But you can still access the list, even though it’s not quite the same.

From the Month mode, tap the magnifying glass icon at the top right. A list of ALL events appears, separated by the day (though it’s a bit tough to see the demarcation.)

This is also how you can search for an event.

 

Folders in Mountain Lion

The old way to put similar files into a folder is to first create the folder and then drag the items into it.

Mountain Lion offers a shortcut:

1. Select the items by clicking on one, holding down the Command key and clicking on the others.

2. From the File menu choose New Folder From Selection

or

Right-Click (or hold down the Control key and click) on one of the selected items and choose New Folder From Selection from the revealed menu

3. Title the folder and you’re done.

iPad Tip of the Week

Change Your Email Signatures

Your emails don’t have to say “Sent from my iPad or iPhone. In fact, if you have several email addresses, you can now create a different signature for each account.

1. Tap Settings

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars

3. Scroll down to Signature and tap

4. To set the same signature for all email accounts, tap All Accounts and then, in the box below, type what you want to appear at the bottom of every email

5. To set a different signature for each email account, tap Per Account. All addresses will be listed and you can type in each box

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Using iCloud to Share Mailboxes

 

One of my favorite features about iCloud is that I can save important emails on the cloud and am able to access them from my computer, my laptop, my phone AND my iPad, and even from someone else’s computer via the web. I find this especially helpful when I am traveling: all of my flight information, reservation confirmations and other important stuff is with me.

To set this up:

1. In Mail, click the plus sign at the bottom of the left column that shows all of your Mailboxes.

2. Chose to create a New Mailbox.

3. Title it (ie. TRAVEL)

4. Next to Location, choose iCloud

5. Now, drag any important travel emails into this Mailbox. That Mailbox will now be available on all other devices that have your iCloud/me.com/mac.com mail account

In order to use iCloud to sync your Mailboxes, you need to be running Lion or Mountain Lion. If you’re ready to upgrade, I can help with the transition. Email me for details.

iPad Tip of the Week

Sharing iCloud Mailboxes

To access the Mailboxes you created on iCloud for sharing emails,

1. In Mail, scroll down past the Inboxes to Accounts

2. Tap iCloud

3. Scroll to see all of the Mailboxes

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Tips for Printing iCal Calendars

 

Here’s a quick video lesson that will show you several ways to customize what you print from iCal. Yes, you can even print blank monthly calendars!

Here’s the link–enjoy!

iPad Tip of the Week

Hidden Volume Adjuster

Even faster than pushing the up and down button on the side of your device, you can adjust the volume right on the screen.

1. Double tap the Home button to reveal the bar that shows all of your recently opened Apps.

2. Slide that bar all the way to the right until you can’t go any further and you’ll see the volume slider.

3. You can also adjust the brightness here.

4. Double tap the Home button when you’re done.

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Google Secrets

 

With Safari’s new all-in-one address/search bar you can access some of Google’s powerful features without having to go to google’s page.

To get a quick definition of a word, type: define and the word

To check on a flight, type the airline and flight number

To check a stock price, type the stock symbol

To bring up a calculator, type in any equation

 

iPad and iPhone Tip of the Week

Returning Recent Calls

To quickly call back the last person you spoke to, no need to tap on Recent. Instead, from the keypad, tap the Call button and the last number will appear. Tap Call again to dial.

 

Missing Folders in Mail with Lion

Where did all of my folders go? Many clients are emailing me in a panic.

The triangles that used to appear next to ON MY MAC and iCLOUD and GMAIL that you could click on the reveal your folders are gone.
To see your folders, hover your mouse over ON MY MAC and iCLOUD and GMAIL where the folders used to be and you’ll see the word SHOW on the right side.

Click SHOW and all of your folders will appear.

iPad and iPhone App of the Month

Where Am I?

On your iPhone and your iPad if you have a 3G data service, you can immediately find your location on the Map.

1. Tap the Maps App

2. In the bottom left corner, tap the arrow

3. Your location will be marked with a green pin on the map

4. Turn your device and the map will rotate, based on the direction you are facing- a handy feature when you are using the Maps in walking mode.

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Fast Printing

Instead of opening up a document in order to print it, you can drag the icon of the document onto the printer icon in the Dock.

To get your printer into the Dock, open any document and print it. The printer icon will appear briefly in the Dock as it is printing. Click and hold the cursor on the icon and choose Options. Choose Keep in Dock.

Now, anytime you need to print something, just drag it onto the Printer icon.

iPad and iPhone App of the Month

Favorite Apps of the Month

People are taking more pictures than ever with their iPads and iPhones. If you’d like your pictures to have a little more pizazz, check out these free Photo Apps:

INSTAGRAM: Pick from several filtered effects and borders, then share your photos on Instagram’s website.

HIPSTER: Hipster lets you create a send photographs as postcards, complete with a photo, text, location and more.

PICTURE EFFECT MAGIC: Turn your photo in a retro snapshot or a picture drawn by a pencil or paints. Or just add a frame of flowers–the choices are endless.

PICIBOOTH: Turn your iPhone and iPad into a photo booth with different backgrounds and cool effects.

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Comparing Pictures in iPhoto

You can compare two photos in iPhoto by clicking on one, holding down Command and clicking on another. Click Edit and they will appear side by side so you can decide which one is better.

This is just one of the many tips and shortcuts that you’ll learn in The Virtual Classroom courses All About iPhoto. Whether you are still using iPhoto ’09 or have the newest iPhoto ’11, there’s a course for you.

Check it out!

iPad and iPhone App of the Month

New iOS 5.1 and iPhoto

With the introduction of the new iPad, there’s also a new iOS for all iPads and the iPhone.

Download the new iOS 5.1 software under Settings–General–Software Update.

Once you install the new iOS you can download iPhoto ($4.99) for your iPad and iPhone and do all the editing, effects and organizing you’ve been able to do with the Mac version.

The iPad and iPhone version also includes Photo Journals, great for sharing your pictures with friends and family on the device and online.

For a complete review of the new iPhoto for iOS 5.1, click here.

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Lion and Mail: Saving Photos and Attachments

In the newest version of Mail, the SAVE button isn’t gone, it’s just hidden.

1. In the top right corner of any email, click on Details.

2. Now you have the familiar SAVE and QuickLook options.

3. To Save a picture into iPhoto, just click and hold on SAVE and choose Add to iPhoto from the menu.

4. To Save an Attachment, click and hold on SAVE, choose SAVE ALL and choose where you want to save it.

iPad and iPhone App of the Month

Adding a Person’s Photo to their Contact Info

It’s fun to have a person’s face appear when you are receiving an incoming call from them on your iPhone or a FaceTime call.

1. Find the person in your Contacts.

2. Tap Edit.

3. In the top left next to their name tap the square that says Add Photo.

4. You can either take a picture of them or choose a photo from your Camera Roll.