iPhoto 6 now allows you to create a slideshow of a Photo Book. Before you could only watch a slideshow of single, full screen photos but now you can do this will the pages of your photo book. iPhoto has always allowed you to export a normal slideshow to a Quicktime movie, but this option doesn't appear to be available for photo book slideshows. However there's a secret way of doing this.

Start by creating your photo book. Do this by clicking on the new book button at the bottom of the window and giving your book a name. Notice that it now appears in the sidebar. To add photos to the book, browse your library and drag the photos you want to the photo book entry in the sidebar. When you have added all you want, click on the photo book. You can now enter the title and description and any other information about your photos. Place them in the book by dragging them from the toolbar at the top into the photo frames in the book. If necessary, add extra pages by clicking the corresponding button at the bottom of the window.

Once your book is completed, you can view the slideshow by clicking the play button at the bottom. This will bring up the slideshow options. Make sure the random order check box is unchecked (you don't want your pages appearing in a random order) and choose the amount of time you want each page to appear for. To make the movie more book-like you will probably want to use the "page peel" transition, going left. You might also want to add some background music from your iTunes library.

Now if you click play, the slideshow will begin full screen. Check it appears exactly how you want it. Now how do we get this into a movie you can save? Exit the slideshow to return to your photo book. Now hold the Option key and click the play button again. You will get the same slideshow settings as before. Check they are all right and click play.



Instead of going to the slideshow, you will now be prompted to choose a location to save your movie. Give it a name and click export. Now your photo book is saved as a Quicktime movie that you can watch and share.

Mac OS X Tips has been around for about a year now, so I thought I'd do a post on the how the past 12 months has gone.

The very first tip, on how to Auto-Tab Bookmarks was posted on the 22 June, 2006. Since then I have added 128 articles, giving an average of 2 or 3 tips posted each week.

Here are the top 10 posts in terms of the number of page views they receive. These are the best tips to check out if you are a new reader.

1. Top 15 Terminal Commands for Hidden Mac OS X Settings
2. Hidden File
3. Address Book Tips
4. Peek inside Mac OS X Packages
5. Another Way to Force Quit
6. Multiple Music Libraries in iTunes 7
7. Set a Screen Saver as the Desktop Background
8. Tips for Deleting Stubborn Files
9. The Ultimate Customize Toolbar Shortcut
10. Get useful system stats in the Mac OS X login window

There is a considerable gap in page views between the top 4 and the rest of the tips, due to those tips being picked up on digg.

My favourite tips are not always the ones that end up being the most popular, however. Some other tips that were more enjoyable to write include Seven Simple Safari Shortcuts, Google Notifier's Hidden Features, Secret advanced editing mode in iPhoto and Make the Most of iPod Notes.

As always, for all 128 tips, check out the Tips Archive.

RSS subscription to the blog has been steadily growing, with some huge jumps recently. The daily subscriber count is now over 1000. Here's a graph showing the number of subscribers each day since September 2006.

For Mac OS X Tips updates in your News Reader, subscribe to the RSS feed.

The blog community has also been doing quite well recently. If you want to join in, add me as a Technorati favorite or join the Mac OS X Tips MyBlogLog community.



The Ask a Question page is currently ensuring my inbox is always nice and full. Recently I have been considering adding a forum to the site. This is because many of the questions/answers aren't suitable for the main blog but would be very useful if they were publicly available. It would also mean I wouldn't get asked the same questions over and over again and other people would be able to submit tips more easily. Leave a comment below if you think this is a good or bad idea, or have any other suggestions for the site.

1. Exposé your Photos
If a number of images are open in Preview at the same time, you can view a full screen slideshow by choosing Slideshow from the View menu or by pressing Command-Shift-F. Once the Slideshow has started, press I or click the "Index page" button in the toolbar. This make a contact sheet of all the images, with exposé style animation. Shift-click for slow motion as usual.


2. Sort Order in Sidebar
Normally images appear in alphabetical order in the sidebar (although PDFs appear in page order) but you can choose a different sort order by right-clicking on one of the thumbnails. This brings up a contextual menu with path, kind, size, date and keyword sort options. For your own custom order, just drag the images up and down.

3. Quickly Trash Images
While viewing an image in Preview, pressing Command-Delete will move it to the Trash, just as if you had selected its icon in the Finder. This is useful if you want to cycle through a collection of photos using the Up and Down arrows, and press Command-Delete to Trash the unwanted ones. You can also drag the thumbnail from the sidebar to the Trash.

4. Rotate Options
By default, the rotate buttons don't appear in the toolbar when viewing PDFs. To add them, Command-Option-click the Show/Hide toolbar button to bring up the Customise toolbar options. When you click rotate, it will rotate every page in the PDF document. If you Option-Click rotate, only the page you are currently viewing will be rotated.

5. Open a Folder of Images
Dragging a folder onto Preview's icon will cause it to open up every image in the folder. You will have to hold Command-Option while dragging onto the icon to force Preview to accept it. Be careful when doing this with a folder with lots of images in. If you do this with your Pictures folder for example, it will open your entire iPhoto Library. If you are adventurous, have a go at doing this with an application (they are just disguised folders anyway). Strangely, Preview can "open" itself.

6. Use the Scroll Tool with Images
When viewing PDF files, you can access the scroll tool through the View menu. This allows you to drag the images about with a hand rather than using the scroll bars. Unfortunately, this tool is greyed out when viewing anything but PDFs. To use the scroll tool with other formats, hold the Space bar before dragging an image. Additionally, if you Space-Command-click you will zoom in, and if you Space-Command-Option-click you will zoom out.

7. Slideshows Without the Toolbar
When viewing PDFs fullscreen using the slideshow option in the View menu (Command-Shift-F), the toolbar appears at the bottom whenever you move the mouse. To prevent this, double-click anywhere (but not on the toolbar). Now the toolbar will stay hidden until you next click. You can still get its functionality using keyboard shortcuts: Space will Play/Pause and the Left and Right arrows scroll through pages. Pressing A and F will toggle between actual size and fit to screen.

8. Change Annotation Font Size
The annotate tool is available when viewing PDFs. You can have a red oval or a yellow text box. The text is fixed to the System Font, which is Lucida Grande, size 13. To change the size, type defaults write com.apple.Preview NSSystemFontSize -int 9 into the Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and press return. The number at the end is the font size (replace with 13 to return to normal). You will need to quit and reopen Preview for changes to take effect.

9. Change Zoom Level after Spotlight Search
When you click on the PDF in the Spotlight results, it opens up in Preview with the search term highlighted throughout the document. This is pretty useful, however the PDF is actually zoomed in 280 percent. This means you can read the word you searched for pretty easily, but you can't see anything else. To reduce this, start by quitting Preview if it is running and open up Terminal from the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Type defaults write com.apple.Preview Preview -dict-add PVPDFSpotlightSelectionSize 10 and press return. The 10 at the end corresponds to a 100% zoom level. To return to normal, replace this with 28 (280% zoom). More information here.

10. Image Correction Tools
Preview offers a lightweight alternative to iPhoto's image correction tools. This is accessible from the Tools menu, and offers almost everything iPhoto does. Be warned through, there is no undo option for these changes, so the only way to go back is to revert to the last saved copy.

11. Bookmark Images and PDF pages
This feature was originally designed for long PDF files. If you want to save a certain page for reference or are half way through a long ebook and want a break, you can bookmark the page by pressing Command-D or by choosing Add Bookmark from the Bookmarks menu. Interestingly you can also bookmark images that you use often so you don't need to locate them first.

12. Get Selection Size
If you hold the Option key before dragging a selection, a small grey box will appear, telling the size of the selection in pixels. More information here.

13. Tag Images
In Preview you can tag images with keywords that are recognised by Photoshop and Spotlight. To do this, press Command-I and click on the Keywords tab. This "Document Info" window acts like an inspector palette, so you can easily scroll through your images without having to open it again.

Recently I came across a couple of scripts on Mac OS X Hints that automate emptying the Trash so you don't have to remember to do it regularly. One of them deletes items that were trashed over seven days ago and the other empties the oldest items once the trash reaches a certain size.

The one that empties items that have been in the trash for too long is a bit complicated and involves using the Terminal. The second one, however, is fairly simple and accessible to anyone who wants their trash to empty automatically.

It involves an AppleScript that you attach to the trash as a Folder Action. This script checks the size of the trash every time you add a file to it. If the size goes over a limit, it will deleted the item that has been in the trash the longest.

There are various versions of the script on the Mac OS X Hints page as many users added suggestions in the comments. If you are interested, take some time to read through the page to see how the script works. Adding all the suggestions and improvements, I made a copy of the script you can copy and paste from here.

Select all the text and paste it into Script Editor (in Applications/AppleScript). Now you need to decide what size limit your trash will have. This is specified in megabytes on the 4th line of the script. It is currently set to 2048 (2GB). If you would like a different size, change this number. 512 for example, would mean that older items would be deleted to keep the total size under 512 MB.

Once you are done choose Save As from the File menu and go to the Library in your User folder. In here go to Scripts, then Folder Action Scripts. You will probably have to create these folders unless you have added folder actions in the past. Save the script here.

Now open up Folder Actions Setup (in Applications/AppleScript). If you click the plus button, you will be presented with a normal "Open" dialog. However there is the problem that the Trash is a hidden folder. It's actually located in your user folder with Documents, Music, Movies etc. To get to it, press Command-Shift-G. In the box that appears, type "~/.Trash" (without the quotes) and click Go then Open.

In the list that appears, choose the script that you just saved. Now you can start trashing things without ever having to worry about emptying the Trash again!

Be warned that this script permanently deletes files from your computer, without you specifically telling it to do so. If you change your mind and want to retrieve a file you put in the trash, you may find that it is already gone.

For an easier alternative, you can download Compost, an application for automatic trash management. You can download it for free to try out (limited to 15 files), and it only costs $12.50 to use fully.

K writes:

Is there a way to customize your own sounds for incoming emails in Entourage? In OS9, all you had to do was drop .snd files into the system folder and they were accesible from within Entourage. In OSX, it seems like all you can do is assign the standard sound sets. (like the 'new mail' sound etc..)

Microsoft Entourage's Sound Sets are stored in the Microsoft User Data folder located inside your Documents folder. To get there, navigate to: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Sounds sets. In here should be one file, the default sound set that comes with Microsoft Office.

It's not quite as simple as just dropping audio files here though. You need to have special "Microsoft Entourage Sounds" files. Luckily there's a load of them you can download at Sound Off. My personal favourite is HAL alerts sound set.

Once you have downloaded a sound set you will need to double-click it to decompress it. You may need Stuffit Expander for this. You then need to drag the sounds file to the Entourage Sounds sets folder.

Now open up entourage and go to the Preferences (in the Entourage menu). In the Notification section you can choose your new sound set from the pop-up menu. To test each sound, click the little speaker icon next to each check box.

It is also possible to use own audio files or the Mac OS X alert sounds as Entourage alerts. It's just not quite as easy and you can only make it play when you receive new mail. Essentially you have to create a mail rule that will run an Applescript that will tell another application to play the sound file.

The first step is to download Play Sound, a really simple sound player for Mac OS X. After downloading this, install it by double-clicking on the disk image and dragging Play Sound to your Applications folder.

Next, open up Script Editor (in Applications/AppleScript) and paste the following script:

set soundAlias to "Macintosh HD:Applications:Microsoft Office 2004:Office:Sounds:Take Off" as alias
tell application "Play Sound"
play (soundAlias as alias)
end tell

Running this script will play a sound file. To choose your own sound file, you will need to change the first line of the script. Macintosh HD:Applications:Microsoft Office 2004:Office:Sounds:Take Off tells it to play the "Take Off" file in the "Sounds" folder in the "Office" folder etc. If you wanted it to play a file in your Music folder you would put something like Macintosh HD:Users:matt:Music:sound.mp3. If you wanted it to play one of the Mac OS X alert sounds, you would put something like Macintosh HD:System:Library:Sounds:Sosumi.aiff.

Once you have chosen your sound file, select Save As from the File menu, and save the script in the "Entourage Script Menu Items" folder in the "Microsoft User Data" folder in your Documents.

The final stage is to get Entourage to run this script when certain things happen. In the Tools menu choose Rules and click the plus to create a new one. Select your criteria for when the sound will play. If you want it to play for all new messages, leave the pop-up menu as "All messages". Now choose "Run AppleScript" from the Action pop-up menu. Choose your script and click OK to save the rule. Now you are all done.

Even though you can't use mail rules to play a nice "Welcome" sound like the sound sets do, you can make one play manually. Any sound script you add to the "Entourage Script Menu Items" folder can be accessed from the script menu next to the help menu at the top of the screen. Just click up there or assign a keyboard shortcut to play it whenever you open up Entourage!

One of the problems that seems to cause the most distress amongst Mac users who contact me is when user folders go missing.

In general, there seems to be two reasons why a user account and their home folder can disappear. The first is simply that you have (accidentally) deleted the user. Any administrator account has the ability to do this from the System Preferences.

The second way occurs when upgrading or installing Mac OS X from the install disks. If you inadvertently chose an "Archive and Install" installation, all users are deleted unless you choose to preserve them.

Luckily, in both of the above cases, Mac OS X keeps a copy of the user folder in case you want to get it back.

Recovering Deleted User Folders
In the Accounts section of System Preferences you can delete a user by selecting them and clicking the minus button. You are presented with two options - to keep a copy of the user folder (the normal way) or to delete immediately. Unfortunately, if you chose to delete an account immediately, it is almost impossible to retrieve it.

However, it is more likely that you kept a copy (the option with the big blue "OK" button). This copy is kept in the Users folder under "Deleted Users". You must be logged into an administrator account to have access to this folder. Look in here for the name of the deleted user you want to recover, and double click it. This will mount a disk image on the desktop that essentially the deleted user folder. Hold option and drag this disk image from the desktop to the Users folder in your Hard Drive. Now you have restored the user folder, but you still need to create an account for it. Skip down to "Recreating the Account" to do this.

Users lost during an Archive and Install
When you perform an archive and install without preserving users, your user folders are archived away along with the rest of the existing system files for your Mac. A new folder called "Previous Systems" is created in Macintosh HD that contains all the users from before the archive and install. If you have done an archive and install multiple times, you will have a number of previous systems. Choose the one that contains all the users you wish to restore. In here is a users folder containing each of the deleted user folders. Drag the ones you wish to restore to the users folder in Macintosh HD. Now you have restored the user folders, but you still need to create accounts to be associated with them.

Recreating the Account

Go the Accounts section of System Preferences and click on the plus button to create a new account. You may need to enter an administrator password to do this. The "short name" of the new user must be the same as the name of the folder you just dragged to the users folder. When you click OK, a dialog will appear asking if you want to associate this account with the folder that is already in the users folder. Click OK to do this.

If you just want to retrieve certain files from the deleted user, you don't need to go through the hassle of creating a new user. From any administrator account you can open up the deleted user's disk image or Previous Systems folder and copy specific files from it.

One of the most useful features of the Finder Column View is its ability to preview movies and music that you would otherwise have to open up using Quicktime. If you haven't seen this before, open up a folder containing music or movies and press Command-3 to make sure you are in Column View. Now click on a movie or music file and it will appear in the preview column with the usual Quicktime playback controls.

However, with some files, you might find that the audio is too quiet to hear. If you have turned up the volume to full and your Mac's speakers still aren't playing it loud enough, there is a simple way to get an extra volume boost.

If you hold the Shift key before clicking one the Quicktime volume control the slider has more range than normal. This also works when viewing Quicktime movies embedded in a web page.

If you have opened up the file in Quicktime, you can get the same results by choosing "Show A/V Controls" from the Window menu (Command-K). In the A/V controls there is a slider that goes higher than the maximum volume on the slider in the Quicktime window.

Pete writes:

After selecting all text with Command-A, is there away to print it from memory to the printer without pasting it to an application? If I'm on a website I don't want to have to paste it into TextEdit to print it.

The best way to achieve this is using an AppleScript written by Chris from Macs in Chemistry.

You can download the script by clicking here. Double-click the downloaded file to un-zip it. You will now have a file called "Print Clipboard.scpt". Now go to the Library folder inside your user folder. Look in here for a folder called "Scripts". If it isn't there, create it by choosing New Folder from the file menu. Copy the "Print Clipboard.scpt" file to this folder by dragging it across.

Now Navigate to Macintosh HD/Applications/AppleScript and open up AppleScript Utility. Near the bottom of the window that appears, check the box that says "Show Script Menu in Menu Bar" (if it isn't already checked). A menu will appear near the right hand side of the menu at the top with an icon that looks like a script. If you open this menu you will notice the Print Clipboard Option at the bottom.

To see if it works, go to Safari (or your normal web browser) and select some text. Press Command-C to copy it. Now instead of pasting it into TextEdit, just go to the Script menu and choose the Print Clipboard script. If all is well, a dialog will appear confirming you want to print.

You must have a default printer set for the script to work. If you are having trouble, go to the Print and Fax section of System Preferences. If the "Selected Printer in Print Dialog" is set to "Last Printer Used", change it to the specific name of the printer you want to print with.

If you are feeling really adventurous you can even try editing the script. If you go to the Scripts menu and Option-click on "Print Clipboard" it will open up the script in Script Editor. Now you can make changes.

For example, if you want to remove the dialog that confirms what you are printing, put "--" (without the quotes) before the start of the 4th line. It would look like this:

--display dialog the_clip buttons {"Cancel", "Print"} def...