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Apple's iWork '09 Numbers spreadsheet is a versatile app with a lot of power available if you open your mind and don't expect it to be Excel. It does not quite do everything Excel does, but it handles UTF-8 well (where Excel does not and has never), and I take advantage of that often. I also love the formatting options and the multiple-sheets-per-document paradigm, but that is a different post.

One challenge in both Excel and Numbers is how to handle fields with numbers with leading zeros. For instance, a part number 001234 will come out as 1234 when you import it from a CSV in either app, and lose meaning if the actual part must include the leading zeros. You can set a cell or column format in Excel as 000000, and this works the same way in Numbers, except the method's a little unfamiliar.

How to Format a Part Number Field to Preserve Leading Zeros

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Corrupt Apple Leopard Server Open Directory Services
Thu, Oct 15 2009 22:24 | LDAP, Open Directory, tips, software, Troubleshooting, apple | Permalink
I had a Leopard Server crash and burn so that nothing was responding, and when I forced the server to reboot (as well as rebooting a bunch of other ancillary servers and services just in case), I found an ominous sign in Server Admin, along with no user accounts in Workgroup Manager. Eek! Server Admin's Open Directory showed:

open directory apple leopard server recover crash

I just installed Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 with no problems after getting a replacement for a bad Family Pack install disk (the Shibuya Apple Store said that many people reported the same), and found that my EMobile Huawei D02HW USB Wireless Dialup card, which was fine in Leopard, died when Snow Leopard was installed.

Reinstalling the EMobile Huawei D02HW on Snow Leopard

Here's how I fixed it:...

emobile d02hw apple snow leopard huawei

Test your mettle against the Network World Quiz-o-Matic. —Rick Cogley ||

From the site:

Whether you love Apple or could live without it, the company holds an iconic place in IT history. Most people think they know that history pretty well. But here are 10 trivia questions with answers that might surprise you. After you take the quiz, head over to Yoni Heisler's iOnApple blog and share your score.

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Ira Winkler's interesting article on why the FTC should investigate apple's security claims in regard to security. -- Rick Cogley |

From the site: I have come to the conclusion that either the FTC must investigate Apple’s advertising claims with regard to security, or people must begin releasing proof-of-concept code on a regular basis. European Union and Canadian regulators can certainly step in as well. With Apple selling more Macs, its attitude is putting more people at risk. And just to be clear, it is not that Apple’s software has security vulnerabilities that is the problem; all commercial software does. The problem is that Apple is grossly misleading people to believe otherwise.

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I updated my MacBook Pro's OS X from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7 today, and there was a little hiccup. Here's what happened.

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Apple KB article on problematic trash and other anomalies. Worth bookmarking. --Rick Cogley

From the site: In Mac OS X, each user account has a separate, invisible Trash folder that is in the home folder. When you view contents of the Trash, you see only items you placed there and not the Trash folder of any other accounts. If other writable volumes are present, you may also have individual Trash folders on these volumes.

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An excellent resource if you work with Apple XSAN.

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From the site: "Calaboration makes it easy to set up iCal to view and edit your Google Calendar calendars. It automatically finds all of your calendars and allows you to add any of them to iCal with the press of a button. "

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SmartSleep lets you select the sleep state of your Mac, and is purported to resolve some of the issues with sleeping people are experiencing with MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

From the site: "SmartSleep.prefPane - is a preference pane that dynamically sets the sleep state of your machine. It’s a successor to Hibernate.prefPane."

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Transmit 3 is a great FTP client for the Mac. Must-have if you make websites. From the Panic Site: "Column view. idisk. sidebar. ftp/ssl. search. zooming. tabs. Transmit 3 takes mac os x ftp to the next level. "

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I love this app. It makes such a pleasing zap sound when zapping an app, and it works well, too. You need this if you trial software a lot, and end up uninstalling. From the App Zapper site - "Introducing AppZapper. AppZapper is for people who want to confidently try new apps while knowing they can uninstall them easily. Drag one or more unwanted apps onto AppZapper and watch as it finds all the extra files and lets you delete them with a single click. A slick safety system remembers which apps you want to keep safe, and the log tracks all the files you've zapped. In one Zap you'll understand it. In two you'll fall in love. Within the five free Zaps, you'll know you need to add AppZapper to your arsenal. Go ahead — try five free zaps and see AppZapper, the Mac uninstaller for the rest of us, in action. "

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If you are technically savvy and use OS X Mail.app, then you can add custom signatures in Mail.app via some CSS Tweaking, following this tutorial. --Rick Cogley

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If you delete a user folder in /var/spool/imap/user/someuser, you need to run this command to reconstruct

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Apple - Support - Discussions - originally about interface name error on Leopard, but good discussion on using changeip.

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How to turn on screen sharing remotely via SSH connection to Leopard Server.

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Tips and tricks for Mac OS X. Contains tutorials for new users, quick tips, timesaving tricks and hidden features. Tips for iLife, Finder, Mail, Safari and much more. Many simple hints for new users, but even the lifetime Mac user will find something new.

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GTD with Apple Mail.app and Mailtags

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Andreas Amann's Mail Scripts for taking action on Apple Mail.app mail - adding addresses, archiving, finding duplicates.

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Motherlode of Mail.app Plugins

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