Backing Up With Time Machine

Time Machine is Apple’s free, built-in backup software. It works with all versions of the Mac OS from Leopard on up.

To use Time Machine you just need to purchase an external hard drive to connect to your computer. Depending on the model of your Mac, you can use a Firewire, USB or Thunderbolt cable connection.

External drives come in a variety of sizes, measured in GB (gigabytes) all the way up to TB (terabytes). It’s best to purchase at least a 500GB drive, more if you have a lot of photos and music. You do not need a Time Capsule unless you don’t already have a wireless network. Time Capsule is both an external hard drive AND a wireless router.

To Set Up Time Machine:

1. Connect the external drive to your computer
2. Turn it on if it has a power switch
3. A message will appear asking if you want to use your external drive as a Time Machine backup
4. Say yes
5. You may get a message that you need to completely erase the new drive to use it. Say OK
6. Confirm that you want to use the disk for backup
7. And you’re done

* It will begin backing up in a few minutes. You’ll see the Time Machine icon in the top right of your menu bar rotating as it backs up.

* The first time Time Machine backs up, it may take several hours. So you may want to stop the backup and then start at a more convenient time. You can make these choices from the Time Machine icon in the top right of the menu bar. It’s the counterclockwise arrow.

* After the initial backup, it will backup every hour, but only the files that have been changed.

Restoring Only Some Files Using Time Machine
In addition to being able to replicate your entire computer’s hard drive, Time Machine can also retrieve lost files on a daily basis.

Have you ever had a document saved someplace that you accidentally deleted and then you emptied the trash, only to realize you deleted the wrong file?

Time Machine can get that file back!

1. From the Finder, under the File menu, choose Find
2. Type in the name of the file you are wanting to restore
3. You can search the entire computer (this Mac) or limit the search by specifying certain criteria
4. Click the Time Machine icon at the top and choose Enter Time Machine
5. Your computer screen will switch to the Time Machine application
6. Use the arrows and the timeline along the right edge of your screen to browse through the Time Machine backups. Your search is performed in every window.
7. When you find the item you want to restore, select it and then click Restore.
8. The item will be returned to its original location before you deleted it.

BETTER SAVE THAN SORRY!

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Important Security Ipdate for iOS7

Apple announced a potential security issue and has released an update for iOS7 users. On your iPad or iPhone:

1. Tap Settings
2. Tap General
3. Tap Software Update
4. Follow the prompts to install the update

————–

Adding Your Signature to Online Contracts

These days we handle so many transactions online to make things faster and easier. But what about signing things?

Some folks think they have to print out the PDF, sign it, then either snail mail it or scan it it and email it back to the sender.

With Mountain Lion and Mavericks, there’s a much easier way!

1. Open the PDF you need to sign.

2. From the Tools menu, choose Annotate, choose Signature

3. A window open, guiding you to write your name in black ink on white paper and hold it up to the Mac’s built-in camera

4. Line up the signature with the blue line on the screen and click Accept. (That’s the hardest part–keeping the paper straight while you click the button.)

5. It saves your signature

6. Now, find the line in the PDF where your signature goes and click on the pull-down menu with a scripted S in Preview’s toolbar

7. Click on your signature and it will appear in the PDF document

8. Drag it into place, onto the signature line

9. Save the document

10. Email it to the sender!

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Even Faster Charging

Your iPhone and iPad will charge twice as fast if you put it in Airplane mode.

1. Tap Settings or swipe to reveal the Control Center

2. Turn Airplane mode on

3. Remember to turn it back off when you’re device is charged

————–

How To Delete Old Email Addresses That Keep Showing Up, Even After You Remove Them From Contacts

Apple Mail remembers everyone you’ve ever sent an email to. Even if you’ve updated a person’s information in Contacts, their old address may still pop up.

If an incorrect address keeps appearing as a choice:

1. In Mail from the Window menu, choose Previous Recipients

2. You’ll notice that many names in the list have an icon of an index card next to them. These people are in your Contacts

3. You can sort the list by clicking on the header for Name or Address, Last Used

4. You can go through the list and select people who don’t have the card next to their name and click to Add to Contacts

5. You can find the bad address and remove it individually

6. To clear the list completely, from the Edit menu, choose Select All, then click to Remove From List

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

Seeing Only Certain Contacts on Your Phone

All of your contacts are stored in one place and are automatically synced with all of your devices. But many folks don’t want to SEE all of their contacts on their iPhone. They just want to see the people they call.

On your Mac:

1. Open Contacts and, from the File menu, choose New Group
2. Name it “phone” or something similar
3. Click on All Contacts in the left column
4. Find the people you want to see on your iPhone
5. Move them into the new “phone” group
6. You can select them one at a time and drag them on top of the group you just created or
7. Click on one name, hold down the Command key and select others
8. Drag one person on top of the phone group and they will all go

On your iPhone:

1. Tap Phone
2. Tap Contacts
3. Tap Groups in the top left
4. Tap each listed group to remove the check mark so that only the new Phone list is checked
5. Tap Done

While only these names will show, you can still use Spotlight to search for people not in this group

Another option is to put your most used people and numbers in the Favorites section.

————

A Fun Way to Email Photos with iPhoto

You probably know how easy it is to email pictures from iPhoto. But with iPhoto ’11 you have a choice about how those photos appear.

You can choose to have them just be attachments right in the email. Or, try this:

1. In iPhoto, under the iPhoto menu, choose Preferences

2. Click on the General icon

3. Next to “Email Photos Using, choose iPhoto

4. Close Preferences

Next:

1. Choose some pictures you’d like to send (Click one photo, hold down the Command key and select others)

2. Click the right facing Share arrow in the bottom toolbar

3. Choose Email

4. In the right column you now have several themes to choose from

5. Each theme will suggest how many photos work best

6. Add text in the designated spaces

7. Be sure to check the box next to Attach Photos to Message so that the recipient can download the photos.

iPhone and iPad Tip of the Week

The Fastest Way To Charge Your Device

Your iPhone and iPad will charge much faster if you plug them directly into a wall outlet instead of your computer.

Be sure to drain the battery at least once a month to maximize performance.

 

 

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

————–

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

————–

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.

—————–

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

 

Lion’s New Scrolling Options

If you upgraded to Lion, you’ve probably noticed some changes in scrolling. The most noticeable difference is that the direction of scrolling is now reversed. Apple thinks it’s more natural that, if you scroll up, then the contents of the window should scroll up.

Maybe you like this new reversed direction.

Or maybe you’d like it to work like it did before Lion. If so:

1. Under the Apple menu choose System Preferences.

2. Click on the Trackpad icon

3. In the very top of this window, remove the checkmark next to “When using gestures to scroll or navigate, move content in the direction of finger movement”.

You might also notice that the Scroll Bars aren’t always there. Again, Apple assumes more people will be using a trackpad and scrolling with the gestures on the trackpad.

To change how often you see the Scroll Bars:

1. Under the Apple menu choose System Preferences.

2. Click on the General icon

3. Click on your desired preferences

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Change Your Default Email Address

If you have more than one email address, you can choose which one is automatically used when you send emails from your iPhone or iPad.

1. Click on Settings

2. Click on Mail, Contacts, Calendars

3. Scroll all the way down to Default Account

4. Click on the address that’s showing so that you can choose which email address you want to use

————-

Are You Missing Emails? Understanding Conversations

When we Reply to an email, or receive an email that is a Reply to something we’ve sent, this is considered a thread (in Leopard), or conversation (in Lion).

Some people like to group these emails together so that they can easily follow the order of the conversation. But when they are grouped, you can easily not notice when a new message comes in that is related to the conversation.

To turn off this feature so that you see each email individually in your Inbox:

In Mail, under the View menu, remove the check mark next to View As Thread (if you are using a version of Leopard) or View as Conversation (if you are using Lion.

You can make further choices about how you view these related emails in Mail’s Preferences, in the Viewing section.

MAC BONUS: FREE VIDEO TIP

I’ve started working on a new series of videos that share some of my favorite new features in Lion.

Maybe seeing what’s new will help you decide to upgrade.

Check out this free video that shows you how to play your iTunes music even when your computer is in sleep mode.

It’s called the Jukebox Screensaver. Just click on the icon to go to the video. Once there, you can click the tool in the bottom right to enlarge it to full screen.

Jukebox Screensaver

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Reception Issues

Cell phones send and receive signals from cell towers. As you drive around town, the signal connects to various towers, handshaking from one to the other. If you drive through an area without a tower (along the 51 through the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, for example) your phone loses connection from the system, if only for a brief minute, and even when it reconnects to the next tower, the signal may not be a 100% handshake.

You may notice more dropped calls or voicemails that show up on your phone hours after the call.

To resolve this issue, AT&T recommends turning off/on your iPhone after you drive through an area with no towers, and also turning your phone off and on at least every two weeks to re-establish full handshaking. Some people get into the habit of turning their phone off every day to ensure the best reception.

To turn your iPhone off, push and hold the sleep button on the top of the phone until you see a screen with the option “slide to power off.” If you continue to have problems with delayed voicemails and dropped calls, contact AT&T.

————-

Safari’s New reading List

If you’re like me, you find a lot of great articles and websites when you are browsing the internet. Maybe you save them as Bookmarks, but rarely go back to read them.

The newest version of Safari offers a great feature for people like us.

Click on the pair of eyeglasses under the Back Arrow icon at the left of Safari’s toolbar. This is the new Reading List, a place to collect web pages that you’d like to come back and read at a later time.

Clicking the eyeglasses again will hide the list.

To add something to your Reading List:

1. Go to a page you’d like to save

2. Click on the eyeglasses and the window will appear.

3. Click Add Page.

Click an entry to go to it.
Click the X next to an entry to remove it from the list.
Click Clear All to clear the entire list.

 

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Clients Share Their Favorite Apps

With the thousands of Apps available, it’s hard to know which ones to try. So each month I’ll share some of my clients’ favorite apps.

This month’s recommended apps, available for iPhone and iPad, are all about fun and creativity:

Brushes: Express your artistic side with painting and drawing tool that work just like the real thing.

Wreck This App: For kids of all ages, get messy, break the rules, color outside the lines.

iBrainstorm: A fun tool to draw, write and share your greatest ideas.

————-

Get a Quick Definition

Sometimes you’ll be reading something and would like the definition of a word. Instead of stopping, opening up Dictionary and typing in the word in question, try this.

Hold down the Command and Control keys and type the letter D and move your mouse on top of the word

The definition will appear as a pop-up menu.

NOTE: This works with most Apple branded applications (Mail, Safari, Pages) but not Word, Firefox and other non-Apple products.

To access the Dictionary in these other Applications, hold down the Control key and click (or Right click) in the middle of the word and choose Look Up or Dictionary, if it’s an option.

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Customize Your Signature

 

 

By default, evey email you send says “Sent from my iPhone or iPad.” You can remove this and even add your own signature.

1. From the Home screen, click on Settings
2. Scroll down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. Scroll all the way down to Signature
4. Delete the existing text and type what you’d like it to say
5. There is no need to Save it, just click back on Mail and you’ll see that, next to Signature, it now shows the first words of what you typed.

—————–

The Fastest Way to Open Any Application

 

Your most frequently used Applications are probably in your Dock and so clicking on the icon will open it.

But sometimes you might need to open an Application that isn’t on your Dock. Instead of finding the Applications folder and scrolling through to find what you want:

1. Click your cursor in the top right corner next to the icon of the magnifying glass. This is Spotlight, the built-in searching tool. A lot of people use Spotlight to find Documents and Files.

2. Type in the name of the Application you’re looking for and it won’t just find it, it will automaticlaly open it!

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

 

 

Mobile Boarding Passes

 

 

Have you seen people checking in by showing the ticketing agent their iPhone or iPad? Several airlines offer the option of a mobile boarding pass.

The boarding pass is emailed to you when you check in online. Usually you have the option of printing the boarding pass, or emailing it to you. You open the email, then click on the link that says, “Get mobile boarding pass.” Then the bar-code comes up on the phone.

Not all airlines offer this service and not all airports use the system.

Here’s a link to check which airports currently support the mobile boarding pass.