Mac Format

MAC OS X

Shine a spotlight on sagacious solutions to your most maddening Mac maladies

- by Arun Steele

Stop desktop difficulti­es dragging you down

The Share menu is surprising­ly complex, and some component it uses has likely broken

Help! My Share menu looks like a shadow of its former self

QWhen I tried to share an Adobe Photoshop CC document, Finder’s Share menu was a shadow of its usual self, lacking all the options such as AirDrop which might have helped. I also noticed that Photoshop was no longer offered as an app capable of opening the document. What has happened?

AThe Share menu is surprising­ly complex, and some component it depends on has probably become broken. When working out which methods of sharing to include in that menu, Finder first has to identify the file type, so that OS X can then establish how such a document could be shared. The fact that Finder’s Open With menu didn’t offer Photoshop to open a document in its own format points the finger at that part of the mechanism.

If this happens again, try opening the same Share menu on a plain JPEG image. If that shows a similar problem, all you can do is restart Finder, log out and back in again, or even restart your Mac, if necessary, to restore normal functional­ity. If the problem recurs, then it’s likely caused by a third-party extension conflictin­g with this intricate mechanism, which restarting in safe mode (see apple.co/1P1IQrm) should clarify. The difficulty then lies in identifyin­g the extension that’s responsibl­e, and updating or removing it.

If things are fine with a JPEG image, the problem results from something interferin­g specifical­ly with Photoshop files, making Adobe products the most likely suspects.

It’s also worth checking your Mac’s logs in the Console app, around the time the Share menu produced unexpected results, to see if they contain any better clues.

 ??  ?? If things like AirDrop are missing from the Share menu, you’ll need to do some detective work to uncover the cause.
If things like AirDrop are missing from the Share menu, you’ll need to do some detective work to uncover the cause.

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