Monthly Archives: February 2013
how to stop help windows always being on top
Ever called up a HelpViewer window in an app only to find that you have to close the window in order to get back to the app and start following the instructions? That can be highly annoying if the instructions aren’t easy to remember.
That’s because the HelpViewer.app is by default set to always be on top. If you want to change that, here’s a nice little Terminal trick that will let you manage HelpViewer windows just like a normal window, courtesy of new tipster site defaults-write.com. Here’s what you do:
1. If you have any HelpViewer windows open, close them first.
2. Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and paste this command into the window:
defaults write com.apple.helpviewer DevMode -bool true
and press ‘return’ on your keyboard.
That’s it! From now on, you’ll be able to switch focus between the app and the HelpViewer window so that you can work with whichever one you need on top.
Tip: If you want to reverse the behaviour, use the same command as above but replace ‘true’ at the end with ‘false’.
If you like exploring the various things you can do with defaults preferences, have a rummage around the defaults-write.com site, a nice little addition to our bookmarks list! 🙂
draft message crashes Mail
If you try to create a message with a corrupted or oversized attachment (suspect anything over 10MB), you might find that Mail keeps crashing every time you try to start it. This problem can be particularly annoying since you often can’t even get Mail open long enough to delete the problem message. Worse, even when you delete the problem message or attachment, it can just come straight back as soon as you try to refresh your messages from your web-based IMAP mail server. If this problem’s happening to you, here’s the solution.
First of all, disconnect from the internet and then quit Mail.
If you’re using 10.7 or later, click on Finder, choose ‘Go’ in the menubar and hold down the ‘option’ key. Choose ‘Library’ from the menu. For users of OS X 10.6 or earlier, navigate toHOME > Library
in Finder.
Once you’ve found the user Library folder (note: this is not the same as the root or system library folder!), navigate to
Mail/V2/Mailboxes
In there you’ll see some folders called things likeIMAP-{yourEmailAddress.com}
for each email address you have. In each one there is a Drafts folder. Locate the correct one and delete the file.
Do NOT restart Mail, but open your internet connection, go to your web-based email through your browser and delete the draft from there too.
Now you can restart Mail. Choose ‘Rebuild’ from the Mailbox menu in the menubar.
Problem solved! 🙂
featured picture: ‘Mail – flurry style’ by Lukeedee
applehelpwriter.com 