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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Amnesia and OS X - settings are not remembered.

RobinS - Jun 18, 2006 - 7:23 pm

I want all my windows to open full screen - no toolbars or other paraphanalia cluttering up my screen space. Every time I open Word I get an Adobe pdf toolbar. Plus the stupid window is cascaded. What for? I have no idea. Every new window is cascaded. Can Mac users not use Command+` to move between windows within an app? Why can't OS X remember these settings? Word doesn't do this in Windows. In Opera I remove stuff from the address bar only to have it appear the next time. And on it goes.

Is this normal? Is it too much to ask for the program to remember where it was last at? This happens over and over in a multitude of programs, both Apple and non- Apple based. Its not the programs - its Apple.

Is it hopeless?

Drumhum - Jun 19, 2006 - 7:50 am

Anon,
I shall try and help you with your frustrations.

Firstly I feel its important to accept that Mac OS is different to Windows. There would be no point in Mac OS being the same as Windows, after all! I mean if you want a Windows like behaviour, work with Windows. For this reason one cannot approach the Mac and expect things to work the same as a Microsoft based machine.

I'm not sure what you mean about having an Adobe toolbar in Word. If you mean Adobe Acrobat Reader opens when you double click a word document then something is not right! Double clicking a pdf document should result in either Apple's Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader opening. If double clicking a Word document opens something other than Word then select the document file and select "get info" from the file menu. Where it says "open with" make sure the drop-down-menu shows "Word". Once done also click "change all" button to make all similar documents open Word.

Not all applications cascade new windows. I'm using Safari right now which does not do this. My version of Word does cascade windows - thats Microsoft for you! Its not that hard to reposition a window is it? All you have to do is click the green button in the top left of the window. This will also make the window as big as it needs to be - it might not make it as big as it ~can~ be, but the mac OS will make it big enough to display as much as is possible (for eg if you are viewing a picture in photoshop then clicking the green button will make the window as big as the picture but not bigger - slightly different to how Windows works)

Command ` does indeed swap between windows within the application. Just to confirm, that is "apple key" and "accent". Have you played with Exposé? You can play with certain settings of this via the system preference "dashboard and exposé" but you should find that F9, F10, F11 is great way to navigate around open windows and applications. See here for further info...
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/

Also you can swap between applications by holding the apple key (command) and pressing the Tab key to bring up a string of icons of open apps. Keep the command key pressed and use the mouse or the arrow key to select the application you want.

As for tool bars and the like "cluttering" things up, you can normally change what is displayed via the applications preferences or something similar - it depends on the app. In word, you can set what is in the toolbar by clicking the small black triangle at the far right or bottom (if its a vertical toolbar) of the toolbar and selecting "customize".

Take time to familiarize yourself with Mac OS - it will be worth it I promise;-). Most folk buy a Mac because of the way it works and feels - they prefer it. There's lots of tips out there on the Apple site and other websites. Don't forget about the "help" system too - just click on the "help" menu in the finder and type "keyboard shortcuts" for example, to get lots of tips regarding this.

Try not to fight it - work with it. Its a very well designed User interface but perhaps very different to what your used to. In my experience once a "PC switcher" has gotten used to the difference they wont go back to a PC;-)

do get back to me if I can help further. Correct me if I've misunderstood some of your queries too!

regards

Tom

RobinS - Jun 19, 2006 - 11:45 am

I realize its not Windows. But I still expect an OS that so many people almost worship to have far fewer glaring flaws.

Adobe Toolbar in Word.......just what says. When I open a Word document, there is an Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker toolbar. Its not very big. When I click View > Toolbars> then I can uncheck it and it goes away. But why does it appear in the first place?

Cascading: Can't I stop this? Finder does this as well. Its totally retarded. And even more so when you can't control it. And clicking the green button......isn't there a keyboard shortcut? Why can't Apple try to give people keyboard options for something so repetitive? I'm convinced Steveo bows down to a big mouse in his office before commencing his daily workload. Its unbelievable. F9/10/11 are useless to me....Alt+Tab is far faster. As soon as you move your hands away from the core keys you waste time. Plus the capacity for error dramatically increases as well. I looked at that Expose page...and sure enough you have to use the mouse to pick the window. More wasted time. More mouse worshipping. I bet Apple engineers type with their mouse!

And I do realize that the user's attitude, if combative, hinders assimilation of knowledge. I guess I have a short temper with software that I need to work on. There are so many areas of OS X that seem to be needlessly cumbersome. And yet version after version they are mysteriously ignored. Very strange company. It sure will be interesting if they lock the OS securely against crackers when the desktop G5 replacement comes out. If they don't, that will be an indication they have full intentions of porting the OS to mainstream or specific PC motherboards eventually. At that point angels in heaven will sing for joy. Then they can focus on the OS, not the hardware - which is pretty poorly designed anyway. I've had a G4 tower and now the Mini and they are both incompetently designed. Poor airflow, loud fans, and in the case of the G4 tower, a child moderately good at puzzles could have designed the layout better. There seems to be a stupendous amount of complacency on the part of the Mac buying public. And as long as the public doesn't care, Apple will continue to bring out the same pretty yet rather unfunctional designs. I expect more from a company that controls hardware. So far, all they can do is build a virus free OS. Its not very stable, programs freeze and crash and it certainly suffers from a lack of left brain logic. Its needs a lot of work for Windows people to come over on mass. They need to design a Windows type skin so those users can instantly do the same things on a Mac that they can on their machine. Then they will see superiority if there is any. And a bloody keyboard that is the same. 95% of the world uses one kind of keyboard and Apple does it different. Unbelievable. No wonder they have only 5%.

Drumhum - Jun 19, 2006 - 3:15 pm

Anon,

Regarding the pdf thing in Word...
I must say I am not a fan of Word and use other software for word processing, consequently am no expert with this software. I cannot find anything in my (aging) version of Word X where I can recreate your pdf issue. I'm thinking you have third party software doing this. A sort of plugin from Adobe?

Have you looked in Tools->"templates and add-ins". here you can set what complementary software loads with Word.

You could also do a search on your computer and try uninstalling anything to do with Adobe acrobat and see if it goes away (make sure you're not messing things up eleswhere though!). Most Mac users do not need anything to do with Adobe Acrobat as you can easily make pdf files from word (or any other app) by selecting "print" from the file menu and then clicking on "save to pdf" via the pdf button. If you need a more sophisticated method of making pdf's I'm sure using the full version of adobe acrobat would be better than using Word anyway. Its these sort of fiddly issues that put me off Word in the first place - its like it does too much!!

Having said that I feel you may well find the answer from a Word-mac specific forum or alternatively you could try posting this specific question to this tech support website for a more specific Word/acrobat expert to answer.

regarding Exposé....
You will find that after pressing a function key you can use the curser/arrow keys to select the application or window you want and then just hit enter.

Regarding the green button.
To be honest, I am not sure why you have such a problem with this as I'm not sure why you need your windows to be at maximum. In a finder window its all about finding the file you want, obviously. If you know the name of the file just type the first few letters of the file name and it will become highlighted, and the window will automatically scroll to display the file.Even if a window is maximum size, there is no guarantee you can see "everything" if there are lots of docs or apps in there. Don't forget you have three different ways of viewing your files too: icon view, list view, column view. You can also change how big the icons are or the text if you want to get more on the screen - you can have different settings for this for each window if you like.

There are many "hidden" features in the macOS that can be discovered. They are hidden to keep things simple for "most" people. Do have a look at this page (and its links) for further tips on key commands and the like...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

Also see the (editable) list of shortcuts in the "Keyboard & Mouse" preference pane.

Note you may find solutions via the "universal access" system preference pane and "speech" pane (where you can speak your commands). these are there for folks who cannot use a mouse for eg but you may find it useful too.

As for your complete disappointment with Apple's design etc I can only express my commiseration. I cannot say I share your views on this. In general I find OSX a dream to work with. Yes there is the odd little personal annoyance but then no designer can please everyone all of the time.

My role here is to provide one-to-one technical support, to try and provide answers to people's questions. No-one else can respond to your comments other than me and the general public can only read the queries after the case is closed. I am most happy to help you but I'm not sure what I can do to curb your disappointment in your computer platform!

If there is anything else I can help you with feel free to get back to me.

Kind regards

Tom

RobinS - Jun 19, 2006 - 3:40 pm

PDF toolbar........BINGO! It was there in templates and add-ins. Wonderful.

It sure would be nice if all the settings were in one place instead of scattered all over the Word. Oh well - I'm going to have to roll up my sleaves and spend some time learning word processing. I know almost nothing in this area. Since I've not a lot of time invested in Word I could look for other tools. What do you recommend? I need something that can interface with a webpage. Currently I"m maintaining a webpage and just use Word. Its working well though I have not used tables and other organizational tools at all. Its very simple. It would be good to have a word processor that I can do web pages as well.

How is the iWork word processor?

And why do people use pdf? Can't you just do a document in Word? Or does it have creative options not available in Word?

"Its like it does too much"........yes that makes sense. I hate it when things I don't understand are activated by default. Not good.

Expose - not for me.......at least not now. I usually can switch between open windows very fast with a Command+Tab,Tab,Tab.

I finally got Pathfinder so gradually Finder will bite the dust. I have many, many files that can be pages long - often I don't know the first letter I'm looking for. Not having things visible on the same window is ineffeicient for my work. Maybe I'm a control freak - have to SEE everything at once. Maybe I liked Windows Explorer too much? Pathfinder should be much better still. Icon/List view have too many limitations for me. List view - the name can only be about 40% of the line width......totally illogical and useless for long file names. Then when you go up a level it changes to Column view. Ugh. Icon view.....well maybe if I was in kindergarden and like pretty pictures.

Colunn view would be ok if it could automatically resize the column to fit the longest file name. THAT would be logical. So it may never happen.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459
Yes - I've seen this before.

I wonder if its possible to turn off any of those shortcuts?

Sometimes I hit something be accident and it activates something I don't want. Once again its not logical to have a shortcut active with no knowledge of that shortcut.

So thank you much for the answers. Very well done.

RobinS - Jun 19, 2006 - 4:22 pm

well the toolbar is back.......maybe I should trash the Preference file for Word and start fresh? Bloody Amnesia.

RobinS - Jun 19, 2006 - 4:44 pm

Trashed the Preferences - and went through every single Preference area I could find in Word. The PDF toolbar is back with a vengence. Unbelievable. I can't seem to find anything in the Preference file of Acobat 7.0 Pro or Reader 7.0 either.

Drumhum - Jun 19, 2006 - 4:52 pm

RobinS,

Glad we got the pdf thing sorted:-)

I use Pages (from iWork) for word processing. I find it easy and quick to use for my purposes (the odd letter, CV). My Mother (Considered a 'silver surfer" now she has a Mac) likes it too: she likes it for making basic posters and adverts for the committees she works with. The end results look very good and I feel my docs look much better than they would in Word. I use the templates from time to time, which, although at first look appear to be forcing you into working in the "designers way", in practise give a great starting point. Like most applications you can save the file in html format for web use, though frankly for any web design other than basic stuff, a dedicated web page design package (plus a significant learning curve!) is the way to go. For the money, Pages is a great buy - though I'm sure some word processor "power users" would find plenty of faults with it.

Re web design..
I have had a good play with iWeb which comes with the latest iLife package. This package has the potential to be simply brilliant! It is sooo easy to use and you can create web pages that would be a huge challenge to a web programmer doing things the traditional way. being version 1 though there are some issues that can annoy and it is really designed to work with Apple's .mac service but this is not a major problem: you just have to save the web site as a folder and upload it via FTP, rather than select the easy route of "publish to .mac". I'm not sure how it would work with a website that is already up and running - there could be issues to deal with there. Roll on version2 - definitely worth a play with though! The thing to bear in mind with anything web is that it can get very complicated and stuff that makes things simple like iWeb will require you to work in a certain way - in this case, Apple's way ;-)


The whole idea of pdf is to be a universal file format that ~everyone~ can read, and see the page laid out exactly how the author intended. A pdf document cannot really be edited for this reason, though, depending how it was made, many applications can import data contained in a pdf. Most computer users can read pdf's with a variety of software and adobe acrobat reader is available as a free download. I send my invoices to my employers in pdf form via email, knowing they will be able to print it out and it will look just like I want it too.

If I sent my invoice as a word document there could be problems if the recipient doesn't have Word, or, if he doesn't have the fonts I've used, then the formatting of the print would change. I love pdf's due to their universal nature. The format is now often used in high end print projects for eg, where colour profiles and the like are preserved. Its a very complete and clever format. It is intended to be a "delivery" format though. You work in this way for eg: save you current work in Word as a Word doc. Open it the following day to work on it more and perform edits etc. Once fully finished and "ready to send" now's the time to save it as a pdf. I would probably still keep the Word document in case I've missed some mistakes and need to edit further later etc. Its also useful to think that in years to come it a pdf should still be compatible with modern stuff - you may find that Word document is unreadable in the future as its become an "old" format.




I use one feature of Exposé regularly but not much else: F11. This just clears ~all~ open windows to reveal the desktop - great if you need to access the desktop for some reason while you have lots of application windows open.




In list view I can see at least 80 odd characters of the name - thats a very long name in my experience! Note that if you hold the mouse curser over the dividing line between the headings at the top of the window (like "Name", "Kind", "Size" etc) your curser will change when you click. Now you can re-size the column width to allow a longer name display.



The way a you see a particular folder's window is set individually rather than globally. So if you are in column view and you double click a folder to open it the window that appears may have a different setting. Change this setting and it will stay like that next time you open it.

Note also, from the Finder you can go View->"show view options" which opens a floating window that allows you to adjust various parameters either for just the front window or globally, for all windows.



True but then if you have one file with a massive name it might force the other columns off the edge of the screen revealing mostly blank window space! Yep there could be an option to "auto adapt" or not but then this adds more complexity which means we are heading towards "Word-itis", ie too many options!!


yep,
go to system preferences, click on keyboard and mouse, click the "keyboard shortcuts" button and un-check what you don't like from the list. In fact you can add you own shortcuts here too.

Oops
I've just seen your problem is back!
If you look in your MS Office folder in Applications, you should find a folder caller "Office" and in there a folder called "add-ins". Look in add-ins and remove (eg drag to desktop) anything that looks like adobe acrobat or PDF related. That should stop it once and for all, I think.

I find it odd too that Word is not remembering your settings. I'm sure there's a way to do it. to be honest I've just looked at all the settings type stuff in Word and got so overwhelmed I had to quit the software!!
;-)

Hope this helps

regards

tom