Sort files into date-labeled subfolders using Perl
When I installed Leopard, I installed it to an empty partition using a clean install. I then manually migrate my older documents and settings over time -- it's not that I don't trust the Migration Assistant (well, I don't trust it completely, but that's another story), but that I look on each major OS X upgrade as the chance to clean house. So this weekend, after a slow migration, I decided it was finally time to zero out the old 10.4 partition ... but I had a slight problem. I archive my iChats, and have done so for many years. In those archives, there's a ton of knowledge that I prefer to keep rather than lose, so I wanted to move the archived chats into my current iChats folder on the 10.5 disk. In 10.4, all iChat archives were stored at the top level of your user's Documents » iChats folder. In 10.5, however, archived chats are now sorted into subfolders based on the date of the chat. I wanted to move my huge archive to the 10.5 partition, but I didn't want to clutter ...
published on Monday, the 25. February 2008, macosxhints
10.5: Use Mail's IMAP Subscription Lists to limit Mail folders
In Leopard's Mail, select an IMAP folder that is stored on the server, and select Get Account Info (control-click on the account to see this option, or press Command-I). In the Account Info window is a Subscription List tab. Using this tab, one should be able to unsubscribe to Gmail's "All Mail" folder, thus reducing the number of messages stored locally, and the number of messages unread by a factor of two. [robg adds: A couple of comments from users on the queue review site further clarify this hint... Comment #1: "Still doesn???t work for me on my Linux dovecot IMAP server, Apple Mail???s subscription tab just shows up empty and disabled, just like it always did, even though subscribing to only specific mailboxes work just fine in Thunderbird or even Microsoft Outlook, using the same server." Comment #2: "My Gmail folders do not appear in the Subscrip...
published on Tuesday, the 4. December 2007, macosxhints
10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
I was fooling around with a vCard importer application when I somehow damaged my Address Book database. All of my contacts were gone, and even importing the backup that I created minutes ago didn't work. Address Book just sat there and did nothing, displaying an empty screen for minutes, so I was sure that I couldn't import the backup that I created before. Somewhere I found a hint stating that it would, however, rebuild its database if you deleted it. The database is the file named AddressBook-v22.abcddb, located in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook. So I closed Address Book, deleted everything from that directory, and copied, from the package contents of my last Address Book backup, only the folders Images and Metadata, plus the file MailRecents-v4.abcdmr. Then I started Address Book and, voila!, all contacts were back where they belong. ...
published on Tuesday, the 4. December 2007, macosxhints
10.5: Prevent Stacks from changing docked folder icons
If you have multiple stacks in the dock, it is helpful to be able to quickly identify them. Unfortunately, in 10.5 the way in which Stacks work causes, for example, Address Book (or whatever your first app in Applications is) to be used as the icon for the Applications folder in the dock. This makes it hard to identify your docked folders at a glance.To work around this, open Automator and create a new fake Automator project -- it can be completely empty, in fact (choose Custom from the selector when Automator launches). When the project window appears, choose File -> Save, set the Format to Application, give it a name that comes very early in the alphabet -- AAA or similar. For the save location, point to your Applications folder and save it there.Back in the Finder, Get...
published on Friday, the 2. November 2007, macosxhints
One way to replace a broken Desktop folder
I managed to "break" the desktop folder on our macbook. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I'd started to copy an application to the desktop using Terminal, and then thought it wasn't working so quit the copy. Every time I clicked on the Desktop in the Finder, the Finder would thrash and other applications became uncooperative. Clicking on Desktop in the home folder or in the sidebar led to the message that 'there is no default application to open the document "Desktop"...,' which was rather worrying. I managed to copy the folders on the desktop to the home folder, so it was empty but still broken, and anything saved to it would go who-knows-where.I was thinking I might have to do an archive-and-install, which would have been a pain, but then I remembered seeing Apple's article on how to change a user's short name, which involves copying the files from one home folder to another. So I created a new us...
published on Tuesday, the 9. October 2007, macosxhints
TidyUp 1.2.5 adds user's manual, fixes bugs
Hyperbolic Software today released TidyUp 1.2.5, an update to the duplicate finder and disk tidiness utility for Mac OS X. TidyUp 1.2.5 enables users to search for duplicate folders by name, date modified, date created, label visibility, empty folders, folder contents, and more. The software also features a security system that ensures at least one...
published on Friday, the 6. April 2007, macintosh-news-network
A possible cause for oddly named Preferences folders
A while back, I noticed that my user's Preferences folder was staring to accumulate some very oddly named (but empty) folders. How odd? Consider these actual folder names from my machine:The folders would appear at seemingly random intervals, and I could safely delete them with no apparent ill effects. At first, I thought it might some weird form of hard drive corruption, but everything else was fine, and the folders only showed in my user's Preferences folder, so I was pretty sure it was related to an application. After a few months of manually deleting these empty folders every so often, I finally took the time to look for an answer...and found one, right here on the macosxhints forums.It turns out it's related to the Epson TWAIN plug-in for Photoshop CS2. With the plug-in installed, a new randomly-named...
published on Friday, the 16. February 2007, macosxhints
Mail Scripts 2.7.11
Mail Scripts is a collection of AppleScript Studio applications for Mail and Address Book offering additional features or simplified workflow. Mail Scripts consists of the following scripts: Add Addresses (Mail): Add addresses found in the selected messages (in the header fields 'From', 'To', 'Cc', and 'Bcc') to the Address Book. This is much more flexible than the 'Add Sender to Address Book' available in Mail and provides a convenient way for creating mailing lists. Archive Messages (Mail): Move messages from the selected mailbox(es) to an archive mailbox or export them to standard mbox or plain text files for backup purposes or import into other applications. You can select to move all messages or only messages sent within or certain period as well filter messages based on their read and flagged status. Change SMTP Server (Mail): Switch between different already defined SMTP servers or define a new one. This is especially useful if you are using your computer in more than one location and have to switch servers for several accounts at once. Create Rule (Mail): Create a new rule based on the first of the selected messages. This saves you the trouble of copy/pasting address or other info between the message and the rule window and provides a much quicker way for setting up a rule with multiple criteria/actions. Remove Duplicates (Mail): Locate all duplicate messages found in the selected mailbox(es) and move them to a separate mailbox for easy removal (duplicate matching is based on the unique message header 'Message-Id'). Schedule Delivery (Mail): Allows you to send individual messages at predefined times (this script uses iCal for scheduling message delivery). Send all Drafts (Mail): Immediately send all messages in the 'Drafts' folders for all accounts. This saves you from having to open each draft in order to send it. Open Mailbox, Open Message (Mail): Two small faceless scripts which will open mailboxes with new messages or the new messages themselves when run as a rule action. Filter Sent Messages (Mail): Another faceless scripts which will apply your rules to the messages in the 'Sent' mailbox. Export Addresses (Address Book): Export addresses from the Address Book into tab-delimited text files. You can select which groups and which fields you want to export. Search Addresses (Address Book): Find all addresses inside the Address Book matching one or more criteria. As opposed to the 'Search' function built into the Address Book, this lets you search in any field as well as for empty and non-empty fields. As an example, you might use this script to search for all phone numbers with a certain area code in order to update your contacts after an area code change. Mail Scripts are fully localized in English, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Brazilian Portuguese, and Norwegian.
published on Monday, the 21. August 2006, scriptbuilders
Script Bundle Tool 4.0.3
Script Bundle Tool ... Creates an application bundle from an editable AppleScript application (made with Smile or Script Editor) with a simple Drag, Drop and Click. An icon file, if present, is copied to the bundle and appears immediately and the bundle's Get Info window displays the proper info for the Version. Flaws in bundles created by Script Editor are corrected. The dialog interface has been simplified and lets you set the Short Version, Get Info Text, Stay Open and Show in Dock (but no longer the Signature). Includes complete documentation. NEW -- Version archiving. Also includes: Script Scribe 3.1 ... Copies selected text from a Smile or Script Editor document window; Converts the text to dot-indent format and truncates lines so that text wrapping is avoided; Then creates a new Smile or Script Editor window, named 'Script Scribe', containing this text. Run_Timer ... which lets you measure the run-time of any application. CleanupAfterOS9 ... which trashes empty Temporary Items folders visible on any disk; deletes empty OS 9 Desktop folders; and empties the OS 9 Trash; all from OS X. Open_Temp_Items ... Opens the invisible Temporary Items Folder. (/private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/)
published on Tuesday, the 21. February 2006, scriptbuilders