fixed : need to reinstall an app from the Mac AppStore

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Question :

I used to use Microsoft’s SkyDrive without any problems in recent months. Recently Microsoft has changed the name of the app and the service to OneDrive, so I have ‘upgraded’ the app from the Mac AppStore, and it has run okay, but with various connection problems (maybe because I renamed the SkyDrive folder to the new OneDrive folder, so I didn’t have to move or duplicate files and pictures).

But that’s least of my worries. When I try to startup the OneDrive app now, I get an error message, indicating that I need to reinstall the OneDrive app. As this app is downloaded from the Mac AppStore, I looked up OneDrive in there, and it indicated “INSTALLED”, but there’s no option to reinstall…

How do I reinstall this app ?

Answer :

The solution is rather simple, but you might not consider it ‘obvious’ or ‘well documented’ in OSX :

– open the “Applications Folder”

– find the corrupted app you need to reinstall and drag it to the Trash

– open the “(Mac) App Store”-app, and find the app you need to reinstall

– when you’ve found it, you will see that it now indicates “INSTALL”, so just (re)install as usual

…that’s it

Enjoy !

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fixed : Adobe Application Manager hangs during updates

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Question :

Running one of my Adobe applications (Photoshop), I was checking for updates from within the application. I found the “Updates…” option under “Help”, and when I clicked it, the Adobe Application Manager application started up and informed me that there were some updates available, so I indicated to update right away.

The update process started right away, with downloading the updates. But then, after a while, I noticed that there was no progression in the progress bar and the estimated update time was about 4 hours… nothing seemed to be happening… the application seemed to hang…

What can I do ?

Answer :

For some reason the Adobe Application Manger app seems to hang quite often. This might for instance occur if the screensaver starts because there’s ‘no human activity’ during the upgrade process…

The solution is rather simple, and basically comes down to just quitting and restarting the Adobe Application Manager app. Here’s how to :

– if the Adobe Application Manager hangs, press the CMD + ALT + ESC key-combo on your keyboard to bring up the “Force Quit”-window

– then try to quit each open app using the built-in regular Quit-option (CMD + Q key-combo), and force quit any app that will not quit normally using the “Force Quit”-window

– preferably you should now startup Disk Utility and run the “Repair Disk Permissions” action on your internal Hard Drive

-then go to Applications –> Utilities –> Adobe Application Manager –> core –> Adobe  Application Manager

– double-click to run the app and try to upgrade again

– when the upgrade hangs again, just ‘Force Quit’ the Adobe Application Manager again and restart it to try again

– finally you will get a message that the upgrade has succeeded

That’s it !

Enjoy !

😉

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fixed : replace corrupted icon in ABBYY FineReader

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Question :

I have the ORC Scan-to-Document converter software ABBYY FineReader. It works great, but there’s just one really annoying thing : the desktop icon is fine in smaller sizes, but whenever it needs to display in bigger sizes, it gets all scrambled up…

What is wrong ?

Answer :

The icon that is connected to your application seems to have corrupted images for the bigger (newer) icon sizes.

I haven’t been able to find big sized (512×512 and 1024×1024) icons for you, but these PNG-files will help you to quickly create new icons for ABBYY FineReader that will look good at most sizes :

ABBYY FineReader Express 8 (icon 175x175) for ABBYY FineReader Express 8

ABBYY Finereader 9 (icon 256x256) for ABBYY FineReader 9

ABBYY FineReader 11 (icon 256x256) for ABBYY FineReader 11

ABBYY FineReader OCR Pro 12 (icon 175x175) for ABBYY FineReader OCR Pro 12

Here’s how to convert these into icons :

– download the icon you need (just drag&drop from this website to your Desktop)

– double-click the PNG-file on your Desktop (it will open in Preview)

– press the CMD + A key-combo on your keyboard to select the image

– press the CMD + C key-combo to copy the image

– select the “ABBYY FineReader”-app in your “Applications”-folder

– press the CMD + I key-combo to open the “Get Info”-window

– select the icon (a blue corona will appear around the icon)

– press the CMD + V key-icon to paste the image into the app-icon

– press the CMD + ALT + ESC key-combo to open the “Force Quit”-window

– select “Finder” from the list and click the “Relaunch”-button

– then close the Force Quit and Get Info windows

…that’s it

enjoy !

 

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fixed : use internal SATA hard drive in LaCie “Mac mini”-form factor housing

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Question :

I have an old, square-ish Mac mini (2005 through June 2010), which back-ups to a LaCie FireWire 400 harddrive with the same square-ish form-factor. This morning however, the harddrive inside the LaCie mini has died…

I could just get a completely new external hard drive (with a different design) for my backups now, but I really like the square-ish housing of the LaCie mini together with the Mac mini, so I’ve decided to replace the internal hard disk.

However, it turns out that the internal hard disk of the LaCie mini is an IDE (ATA) hard disk, which are increasingly harder to get than the current Serial-ATA (SATA) hard disks, and generally even more expensive.

Is there a way to use an internal SATA hard disk inside the LaCie mini housing ?

Answer :

Yes, there is.

What you need is this :

– a high-capacity internal 2.5″ laptop SATA harddisk (it is possible using a 3.5″ desktop SATA harddisk, but that is not recommended as explained at the bottom of this post), like a Hitachi TravelStar 1TB SATA harddisk

– a 2.5″ to 3.5″ bay converter-frame, or preferably just the Digitus 2.5″ to 3.5″ bay converter-brackets or alike

– a Wintech SAK-65 bi-directional SATA-to-IDE converter (because of the limited space inside the LaCie mini housing, most other IDE-to-SATA converters will be too bulky too fit in one direction or another)

Note : the Wintech SAK-65 comes with all cables to connect a SATA hard disk to the LaCie mini IDE/ATA-internal

When you have all these parts, the build-in is rather straight forward, especially if you use the manual provided with the Wintech Converter. In short :

1- unplug the LaCie mini form the power and FireWire cables, then remove the white plastic triangular feet from the LaCie mini housing (the are sticker-type feet, so temporarily stick them to a clean smooth surface to store) and unscrew the  screws you find beneath them

2- gently open the housing, unscrew the broken iDE/ATA-hard drive, and take it out

3- gently disconnect the ATA-to-ATA cable, and take it out also

4- then put the new SATA-hard drive in and screw it into place

5- then connect the Wintech converter as outlined in the instruction manual (so, set it’s switch to “Device” and do not forget to connect it to the power using the provided Molex extension cable that includes an extra power connector for the Wintech connector)

6- then connect both Wentronic cables to the hard disk on one end and on the other end to the Molex cable and the Wintech connector

7- then make sure the Wintech connector is slightly twisted in such a way that it is a flat on the hard drive as possible and gently close up the housing (don’t forget the plastic feet)

8- reconnect the power and FireWire cables, and then the LaCie mini will be recognized as and ‘unreadable’ drive by your Mac mini

9- use OSX’s Disk Utility-app to format the drive to “Mac Journaled” format, and it will appear as a healthy drive on your Mac (ready for use, for Time Machine backups or alike)

That’s it

😉

—————————

If you really want to build a 3.5″ SATA harddisk into this LaCie mini housing, it can be done, but it will fit so extremely tight that it comes with some extra things you need to address :

1- you will NOT need the 2.5″ to 3.5″ converter brackets

2- the provided cables will not fit in such a way that the housing can be properly rebuilt, so you will also need :

– a Wentronic 4p-Molex-to-angled-15p-SATA power cable (none of the cables with a regular straight SATA-connector will fit, and even most of the angled SATA-connectors will be too bulky too fit, and even this one leaves less than a mm of room for the housing) to extend the “Molex-with-an-extra-power-wire-for-the-converter”-cable

– a Wentronic SATA-to-angled-SATA data cable (most of the other angled-SATA connectors will be too bulky, but the Belkin SATA-to-angled-SATA data cable will fit as well), but you will even have to strip a little extra off the angled connector to enable the cable to make a ‘near-360’-corner

3- the Wintech SAK-65 bi-directional SATA-to-IDE converter needs to be used stripped of it’s plastic housing as it’s too bulky, and you will need to extend the IDE Master/Slave-cable (the wide and flat cable that looks like a lot of tiny wires next to each other) by opening the connection on the converter and putting the original one from the LaCie mini housing in it’s place (after having taken off the connector of that one also)

4- make sure you don’t adjust the 3.5″ SATA harddrive using the screws, just put it ‘on the floor plate'(to make a little extra space)

5- …and then you will have to puzzle quite a bit to fit all of that into the housing

As mentioned before : using a 2.5″ SATA harddrive is far more convenient and straight forward !

Whichever solution you choose :

Enjoy !

😉

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fixed : transfer “on my iPhone” notes to iCloud

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Question :

I have notes on my iPhone (in the iOS Notes app), that I was expecting to show up on my Mac also (in the OSX Notes app) since I have both of them connected to iCloud, but only half of my notes seem to sync…

How can I get all of them to sync via iCloud ?

Answer :

When you are using iOS 7 (or iOS 8) and OSX 10.9 Mavericks (or OSX 10.10 Yosemite), you might have multiple accounts that are syncing their notes to Notes, not only through iCloud, but though other IMAP eMail-accounts as well…

Your best option probably is to transfer all your notes to iCloud and then only use iCloud to sync notes…

Here’s how to do that :

1- on your iPhone (or iPad) open the Notes app, and click on “Accounts” ; in the next window you’ll see multiple accounts listed

2- then, on your Mac, open the Notes app, and go to View –> Show Folders List ; if you click that, a menu pane called “All Notes” will open at the left of the Notes-window ; check to see if all those accounts match the ones listed on your iPhone

3- if they match, proceed to step 4 ; if not, go to Notes –> Accounts, and the  “Internet Accounts” window from the System Preferences will open ; there, select the (eMail-) accounts of the missing accounts, an click them ; in the next window, make sure there’s a checkmark at “Notes” for each desired account

4- then, in the Notes.app in OSX, select each non-iCloud account from the menu on the left and click on “Notes” ; if any notes are listed there, select one of them and then type the CMD+A key-combo to select all of them and type the CMD+C key-combo to copy all

5- then, go to the iCloud Notes, and type the CMD+V key-combo to transfer these notes to iCloud

6- repeat this copy process for all accounts listed, until all notes are copied to iCloud

7- only when you’ve double-checked that all notes are now in iCloud (also), delete the ones in the other accounts (and/or disable the accounts on your Mac)

8- then, on your iPhone (where the Accounts pages of the Notes.app is still open), select “On My iPhone” and on the next page, click each note to open the note, and copy it into a new note (to do so, go to iCloud –> Notes ; then create a new note  by clicking the +-button, and copy the info that new note) ; repeat this until all notes are now visible in iCloud –> Notes

9- Now, check on your Mac and iPhone, to make sure that all messages are now in the iCloud account

that should be it…

enjoy !

 

fixed : calendar entries are transferred, but time is not in sync

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Question :

I am trying to get my appointments from my iPhone to sync with my Mac, but something weird is happening… the appointments I create on my iPhone do appear in the Calendar app on my Mac, so they are syncing, but for some reason they are not appearing at the right time of day…

…what can be wrong ?

Answer :

Make sure you have set the same Time Zone on your Mac and on your iPhone.

On your Mac, in OSX, set it correctly in 2 places :

1st- go to System Preferences –> Date & Time –> Time Zone ; and put a checkmark at “Set time zone automatically using your current location” (or choose your current time zone on the map manually)

2nd- in the Calendar app (previously called iCal) go to Calendar –> Preferences –> Advanced –> put a checkmark at “Turn on time zone support”

On your iPhone (or iPad), in iOS, set it correctly in 2 places also :

1st- go to Settings –> General –> Date & Time –> Time Zone

2nd- go to Settings –> Mail, Contacts , Calendars –>  CALENDARS –> Time Zone Support

…if all is set to the same time zone, your syncing problem should be solved

Enjoy !

😉

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