Scan itemized billing to spreadsheets
I received 30 printed pages of itemized billing, which I want to enter into an Excel spreadsheet for analysis. Asking for this to be sent in electronic form would incur further and substantial charges. Do I have to type in all the figures myself, or is th
You can use optical character recognition (OCR) software on scanned images, which should save you a lot of time, but the results must be checked meticulously against the original documents.
Several different apps in the Mac App Store and elsewhere could do this well, but a sound choice would be FineReader Pro for Mac (around $100, abbyy.com). Although this app is not cheap, it will save you a lot of time in the long run, and it’s able to export directly to Microsoft Excel’s XSLX fileformat, or to CSV if you prefer that.
OCR software can be quite accurate these days, but to get the best from it, make sure you get the best quality scans possible, ensuring every page is straight. Experiment with one page to begin with, optimizing resolution and format to minimize errors, then use those settings for the rest of the pages.
When you come to checking and correcting the spreadsheet files, set aside plenty of time and do not rush it and miss errors. If possible, perform a second pass of corrections, as there are usually one or two that escape the first.
Java again?
I keep seeing an alert that I need to install Java, although I’m sure it’s already installed and up to date. All web content seems to work properly, so I cannot understand what is wrong, and cannot make this annoying alert stay away. Can you suggest a solution?
Oddly, Macs can require either of two quite different versions of Java. This is because older versions of the Java runtime environment were maintained and distributed by Apple, and some apps and tools still depend on them.
However, Oracle has assumed responsibility for all more recent versions, which may be required by other apps and tools. So if something does decide that it needs Java, you should have both versions available, otherwise you may encounter these irritating warnings, as you say.
Apple’s legacy version of the Java 6 runtime environment is officially known as Java for OS X 2015-001, and is available from bit.ly/applejava. Meanwhile, Oracle’s latest Java 8 is available from bit.ly/java8mac. Software
that requires Java 8 needs to be run on OS X 10.7.3 or higher as a consequence of that version of Java using APIs (application programming interfaces) that aren’t available in older versions of OS X.
Thankfully, both Java versions seem to work fine alongside one another. This should put an end to those unhelpful alerts at last.
OS X 10.11.3 update brings backup woes
I recently upgraded my 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (Late 2013) to OS X 10.11.3, which has caused serious problems with iCloud and Time Machine. The latter has been unable to make any backups since that update in January. Looking in the logs, backups start correctly, but still seem to be running an hour or two later, forcing me to restart the Mac. Why are they not completing properly?
Having checked through your logs, these backups appear to be running normally, and do not encounter or report any errors. They are also intended to be very large: over 20GB, which could easily take several hours, particularly if run over Wi-Fi to an already well-used set of old backups.
It may be that your update didn’t install properly, leaving some parts of OS X – particularly Time Machine and iCloud – not fully functional. The best way to fix that is to download the 10.11.3 Combo updater from apple.co/1QGLsze and install it on your existing system. Once that’s complete, let your MacBook Pro run its next backup, which may require that you leave it running overnight to complete. If that doesn’t work, your backups may have become damaged, so it may be worth checking and repairing the drive using Disk Utility before attempting another backup. Errors in Console may give better clues.
Messages deleted from iPhone and Mac
I have an iPhone 5 running iOS 9.2.1 and have bought a new iMac running OS X 10.11.3. When I perform any actions in Mail on messages in my Yahoo mailbox – such as deleting one – it’s replicated on the other system. I often read and delete emails on my phone, only to find that they have also been deleted on my Mac. What’s going on and how can I fix this?
The behavior you describe is correct for IMAP, the protocol you are using to connect to your Yahoo Mail account. IMAP servers store messages on the server, enabling you to access the same
mailboxes from any device you’ve configured to access your account, such as your iPhone and your Mac. When one mail client, such as Mail on your iPhone, tells the server to delete a message, all devices which access the same account see the change and the message is deleted on all of them.
For anything different to happen would require each device to see the mailbox differently, which would rapidly become too complex to understand: you might have to delete a message several times before it would finally disappear from all of your devices.
If you want to retain a message for access later using a different device, you have two options: you can leave it where it is, and deal with it on that other device later on, deleting it when you’re finished with it; or you can move the message to another mailbox, from which it’ll be accessible on the other device. You can also create local mailboxes to store messages, which removes them from your IMAP mail server and so hides them from your iPhone.
Unusual accents
I often need to type quite a few different “unusual” accented characters. I know you can hold down a key to access common accented forms of a letter, but this is pretty slow and tedious after a while – is there a better way of doing this?
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard and enable the option that says “Show keyboard and character viewers in menu bar.” From that new icon in the menu bar, choose Show Emoji & Symbols.
Now, say you’re looking for the character S and its other forms. Click in the viewer’s search box and press S. The Related Characters pane will show a more complete range of different accented versions available in Unicode, including the one that you want.
To enter it into your text, place the insertion point where you want the letter to go in your document, then double-click on the desired character in the viewer. The character is also added to the Frequently Used list so it’s simple to find it again.
You don’t have permission to do that…
How can I check the permissions of a Property List?
Select the file in Finder, then choose File > Get Info. At the foot of the window that opens you’ll see Sharing & Permissions, which lists access rights for what you selected. Click the padlock at the bottom right corner of the window, provide your password, then edit the permissions as you like.
POP vs IMAP
Is POP better than IMAP when using two or more email clients?
POP would be worse. POP delivery services automatically delete messages from the server once delivered to a client. So, a message downloaded onto your iPhone would be removed from the server, and your Mac wouldn’t see it at all. It’s worth noting that some email services provide an option to keep messages on the server, though.
Running your own server wouldn’t really sort out these issues either, as the server would still have to run the standard IMAP protocol. OS X Server is inexpensive, but it’s not trivial to set up as a mail server – plus you would have to keep your Mac running and connected to the internet at all times for it to work.
Backing up while avoiding the cloud
How can I back up my iPhone fully without iCloud?
The official alternative is to connect your iPhone to a Mac or PC over USB, then use iTunes’ backup feature. There are third-party tools, such as the free Syncios ( syncios.com), but these only work with certain models, and their backups may not be as complete.
Making El Capitan less moving
How can I turn off the irritating animations in El Capitan? There’s no general control to reduce motion effects and other animations throughout OS X, despite there being an option to do this in iOS. A small number of apps, including Photos, provide their own control to eliminate these effects, but these remain the exception, not the rule. In Photos’ case, you’ll find this setting in the app’s General preferences.
Dealing with PDFs
What’s the best way to sync and read PDFs on iOS?
To read PDFs using the iBooks app, load them into the OS X version of iBooks and sync them using iTunes. For more temporary use, there are many apps which will read PDFs loaded via iCloud, including the official reader from Adobe, GoodReader and PDF Expert. With iOS 9.3 and OS X 10.11.4, PDFs and ebooks can be synced to iBooks on all your devices via iCloud.
Changing the standard template for new contacts
I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 9.2.1. Whenever I add a new contact to it, the default phone number label that appears is for “home fax,” which is the most obscure of all the options. Each time I do this I have to manually select “mobile,” which is my most common choice. I cannot see how to change the defaults. Is there a way?
Yes, but you will need to do this using a Mac running a recent version of OS X, such as El Capitan, as iOS does not currently offer any more direct solution for reasons best known to Apple. Instead you must edit the default template using Contacts for Mac. This also assumes you synchronize your contacts between your Mac and iPhone using iCloud. In Contacts on your Mac, open the app’s preferences, click the Template tab, then edit the template, which is used as the default both on your Mac and your iPhone. In your case, select “mobile” to make that the default label for the contact’s telephone number.
While you’re here, also check the address format given at the foot of the template: click its label, place the pointer over Change Address Format, and ensure that United States is chosen so that details are presented correctly.
Close the Preferences window to save your changes, quit the app, and allow iCloud a few minutes to catch up with this. You should then find the field choices you made on your Mac have become the default on your iPhone.
However, we’ve had mixed results among the team, with some people’s iOS 9 devices not picking up the change, though it has worked fine for others. Let us know how you get on.