Apps on your Mac you may have missed

Go to Finder and select Applications; in addition to any apps that you may have installed, there are many others including:

Dashboard

Go to System Preferences >
Mission control > Show Dashboard

or to display apps press
fn + F12 keys

 

When Time Machine fails …

Many Mac users rely on Time machine for their backups, but it is not always as secure as one might think. Assuming you have been using Time Machine for some time, messages like:

‘Time Machine cannot back up’ and
‘drive not formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ may appear. If this is the case then …

More on Finder

Finder is such an important way of dealing with files and folders that a short refresher on its use may save you time and effort.

Change Sidebar contents
Finder > Preferences > Sidebar tab
Check or uncheck items in the list depending what you would like to appear in the sidebar

Toolbar contents
Many more options for the toolbar can be found as follows:
hold <ctrl> key >  click toolbar > customise toolbar – drag icons to toolbar including space

Tags
On the Mac colour tags can be attached to files and or folders to help you find certain items.
Right click file or folder to be assigned  tag > Tags…
click colour > file/folder name appears in text.  Delete the name to remove the tag

Try a Password Manager

Password Managers (PMs) enable you to save all your passwords as one master password on your Mac. They include:
1Password, Keeper, Blur, Stickypassword, PasswordBoss, Lastpass, Dashlane, LogmeOnce, Roboform, Zohovault, Truekey and EnPass

The last,  Enpass does not need a subscription like the others. Its use with less than 20 passwords is free.  For more passwords you need the premium version, $9.99 for one device.

Search your Apple Mac

 

Have you ever lost a document or image on your Mac?  Apple’s Spotlight Search is one of the more underused tools available and can help with this problem. To open Spotlight Search, press <cmd> and the space bar, or click the magnifying glass icon, top right of the screen. On more recent versions of Mac OX, you can drag the box around.

Linking an Apple Mac with an iPad

There are numerous ways of linking the Mac to an iPad, but two apps stand out, Reflector 3 and Duet. The former enables the iPad screen to be shown on the Mac and the latter the Mac screen on an iPad. 

Backups

A reminder to take care of your backups – especially if you haven’t made any!  Here’s a rundown of what you can do:

Web Browsers

Safari, Chrome and Firefox are but three of the web browsers that run on the Apple Mac and iPad. All have their adherents, but Safari, being built into the Apple OS and iOS systems has some advantages.

pdf Files

pdf is short for Portable Document Format, devised originally by Adobe and easily opened with their Adobe Acrobat Reader. The latter is free and this helped it become a very convenient method of  transferring documents.  On the Mac, these files are conveniently opened with the Preview app., but not always. If it doesn’t, you can make it the default by selecting any pdf file and right clicking (or ctrl + click).

Word Processing on the Mac and iPad

Apple Pages

Textedit
found in Applications folder
Format > Make Rich Text
Symbols (ABC top right)

Advantage: simple small files that the lack bells and whistles of Word or Pages for Mac / iPad. Text files can be opened by Word or Pages Textedit can create simple tables. lorem ipsum is a dummy text file used in space filling or demos.