MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week, we have questions about old e-mail addresses still being used in Mail's address auto-completion, battery calibration behavior in MacBook Pro systems, printer queue accidentally removed from the Dock, and a commend on another useful utility that tracks file system changes.

Question: Old e-mail addresses still being used in Mail's address auto-completion

MacFixIt reader "Charles" asks:

I have a problem with Mail/Address Book. When my friends change their e-mail address, the old address remains in my system. When I send an e-mail to a friend, I get 2 or more addresses (depending upon how many times they have quit a given service provider). I went dotmac early on, knowing that I would always have the same address (simple and foolproof). How can I purge the old addresses that just keep hanging on and popping up in my send to box?

Answer:

Mail gets its addresses for autocompletion from several sources. The first is the user's address book, the second is the mail already in your in-box, and the third is the previous recipients list. It is likely the old e-mail addresses are still listed in the previous recipients list and you will have to purge them from this list. Go to the "Window" menu in Mail and select "Previous Recipients," and then search for and remove the old e-mail addresses from this list. Do not purge the entire list because it is used for Apple's Junk Mail filter among other features.

Question: Battery calibration behavior in MacBook Pro systems

MacFixIt reader "kehrer1701" asks:

In early versions of MBP's, when you calibrate the battery, you get the warning message that comes up and if you leave the computer on, it should go to sleep...the sleep where the pulsating light is going. What I have seen with this model is that after the warning message, your MBP will then shut down and go into "safe sleep" mode. This is verified by Console messages. The computer still shuts down, however. After you charge it and hit the power button to power on, you see the safe sleep progress bar indicator coming up for a second. After calling AppleCare, they say this is normal behavior for these newer models instead of going into regular sleep. Can you verify this?

Answer:

This has been the behavior of most MacBook models. When you run out of battery power, it goes to a safe sleep mode (writing memory contents to the hard drive in a disk image) and then will either hibernate (a deep sleep mode where you cannot wake it until external power is supplied) or fully shut down if there is not enough power to safely keep the system in a sleep state. The power threshold values for these states may change among different MacBook models, but the behavior is the same. When you connect external power and press the power button, the system will start up and load the memory image file, showing a progress indicator when it does so. This is all normal and expected behavior.

Quesiton: Printer queue accidentally removed from the Dock

MacFixIt reader "Patricia" asks:

Could you help me get my printer back in the dock? I accidentally quit it. Any info will be appreciated.

Answer:

Print another document from any application using the printer you wish. Then right-click the printer when it appears in the Dock and choose the option to "Keep in Dock." You can also check or uncheck the option to autoquit the application which governs whether or not it will quit after printing is done.

Comment: Another useful file-changing utility

MacFixIt reader "Paul" writes:

With regard to [your recent article on fsevents-based utilities]

Another useful utility is the command line utility, logGen from the University of Michigan. (www.lsa.umich.edu/) LogGen produces a text file of the differences and you can restart and do other things in-between.

The latest version is 2.2. However, version 1.9 was better if you wanted to track changes on another volume. LogGen normally will only look for changes on a boot volume. But with version 1.9 if you told it to watch /Volumes/other_partition, it would. Not so with 2.2. Since it is actually a script, one could fix this, but I just haven't gotten that done yet. Maybe someone else will.

The bad news is that it is very hard to find. UMich has drastically rearranged its Web site. The old links that searches tend to find don't work. But if you can't find it, let me know as I think I have the link on another machine, back at the office.

Reply:

I have contacted the University of Michigan to see if it can put a link to LogGen back up on its Web site; however, until then LogGen is available at the Mac section of SoftPedia. It is version 2.2, and I cannot find version 1.9 on the site, but hopefully they will become more available soon. Free and useful utilities are always good to have around.

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