Quick–fire questions & answers
HOW DO I CORRECT MY IPHONE’S CLOCK?
Ensure your phone has a good connection to the internet, then go to Settings > General > Date & Time and turn off Set Automatically. Wait a few seconds, then turn it on again. This should force your phone to resync with its online time server, and show the correct time.
HOW CAN I SCAN A QR CODE?
First check this feature is turned on in Settings > Camera > Scan QR Codes, then open the Camera app in Photo or Square mode and position a QR code centrally in the live view. You may be prompted to move closer or further away. Once the camera has focused, a notification will appear. Tap it to act on the data in the code — which is typically a web address.
HOW CAN I COPY STYLED TEXT FROM A PDF FILE?
Unfortunately, PDF provides very limited access to style info, due to its complex format. If you want to retain more than is normally copied, use a tool to export the PDF content to Word or Rich Text Format, and try copying from the converted doc.
CAN I DETECT AND CONVERT OLD JPEG 2000 IMAGES?
Support for these will be withdrawn with loss of QuickTime 7 support in macOS 10.15. Such files should have a .jp2 extension, which you can search for using a Smart Folder in Finder. Open them in Preview and choose File > Export to save them in regular JPEG or PNG format. Or, use a specialist app like GraphicConverter or Affinity Photo.
DO NUMBERS’ CATEGORY SUBTOTALS EXPORT TO EXCEL?
Yes, provided that you export the spreadsheet in Excel’s .xlsx format and open it in the latest release of Excel 16. You may see some Inconsistent Formula warnings even then, but it appears that those can safely be ignored.
HOW DO I CHECK KEYNOTE DOCS FOR OLD VIDEO FORMATS?
Open them in the app’s current version: it will alert you to old formats that won’t be supported with the discontinuation of QuickTime 7 formats
(in macOS 10.15), and auto–converts them to a supported format like H.264 (you can control this in its preferences).
CAN I RESIZE AN APFS DISK IMAGE?
As of macOS 10.14.4, you can’t change the size of such images using Disk Utility, which reports an error. It works fine with Mac OS Extended images, though. To do this for APFS images, you need the hdiutil command in Terminal (see bit.ly/apfsimg).
WHY CAN’T I SHOW FILE EXTENSIONS IN FINDER?
In its preferences, select Advanced and tick the top item, “Show all filename extensions.” Close that window and extensions should then appear in Finder windows. If they don’t, restart in safe mode (see bit. ly/mfsafemd). Leave your Mac running for a couple of minutes, then restart your Mac as normal. Check that preference is still ticked.