[welmac-org] Lower Hutt Help Desk summary: Saturday 12 May

[David Empson]

We have eight people registered (including two couples who may have some separate issues), plus our hosts who usually have some small questions.

So far only Shane and myself are confirmed as tutors. Andrew and Jo might be available.

The help desk will be at the house of Rex and Robin Hill, 120 Epuni St, Lower Hutt, from 1 pm to 4 pm.

Details from those wanting help are quoted below. Any non-quoted text is my notes, plus edits in square brackets.

Jane Martin

> I will bring my iMac and would appreciate help with downloading photographs of our daughter’s recent wedding from a photographers website onto the computer and also onto a memory stick.
> 
> Also help with updating my old Microsoft Office.
> 
> There is lots more help I need!!! - I will email you again if anything in particular comes to mind.

For the Microsoft Office question: I think Jane has either Office 2008 or 2011, so potentially wants to move to a newer version. At the meeting I was explaining that Office 2019 is due out some time this year, so buying Office 2016 now is not a good idea, but a subscription to Office 365 might be an option, or managing the current version while waiting for a new one.

Lance and Irmtraud Johnson

> We wish to register for this occasion please with a view to tidying up the  Outlook / Paradise transition.
> We will bring our Macbook plus 5s & 5s iPhones


Part of this is changing Apple ID to a new email address, which I wasn’t able to help with over the phone for the cancelled Kapiti help desk.

Natalie Thornton

> I need help setting up the time machine back up with my External Hard drive (which I will purchase this week).
>  
> I could also use a hand sorting out which Safari extensions /or apps to put on my Mac and iPad.  It’s confusing me something shocking.  If you have time.
>  
> I enjoyed the session last night very much and I can envisage that this group learning will help facilitate my Mac knowledge which at the moment is pretty amateur. 

I visited Natalie at home last weekend to sort out her Parallels Desktop (with Windows 10 as a guest) and Legacy genealogy software. She also has Microsoft Office installed in Windows.

She has a 256 GB MacBook Air running High Sierra and may be accumulating a lot of family history data for her genealogy project. She bought a 2 TB external drive with the intention of using it to back up her computer including at least the genealogy data from the Windows side.

On the day I didn’t come up with a reasonable plan for backing up what is effectively two computers to a single drive. Doing a simple Time Machine backup including the entire Parallels VM would result in massive backups in the order of tens of gigabytes for the entire Windows system each time if she is doing work in Legacy.

I’ve subsequently thought of an option which would work: partition the 2 TB drive on the Mac, both using Mac-native file systems, with one partition for Time Machine (excluding the Parallels VM) and one which is shared through Parallels with the Windows guest OS, mounted there as a separate drive. Backup software on Windows (yet to be selected) can copy the important files to what it sees as a network share or another drive letter. (Could potentially back up the entire Windows system, depending on software capabilities, but restoring it in that configuration would be messy so it makes more sense to back up just the data and if a restore is necessary, reinstall Windows and applications then restore data.)

Lesley and Peter Anderson

> I [Peter] am still stuck on El Capitan as I still rely on Bento for my data base listings.
> I realise I have to take the plunge soon to Sierra.
> I have been told in the past that File Maker is the only thing that will work for me
> but that is a continuous expense and a steep learning curve.  Has any simpler 
> alternative turned up yet?
> Booklet printing is another thing I looked at earlier but I understand that Pages 
> may be able to do that.  It was touched on at the last meeting but does that come
> in Sierra or only High Sierra? 
> Lesley’s iPhone 6s came up with the offer of os11 when plugged in today and 
> she would like help in sorting that out.
> We will be bringing Natalie and the screen to pass on as we will not be at the 
> next Mac meeting.

I had suggested FileMaker as a possible migration path from Bento but it is more complex (which is mostly down to the initial setup, which I could possibly help with) and expensive (assuming pricing remains the same: circa $300 every two or three years to keep up to date, after an initial outlay of about $500).

I do have another option I’ve tried which is closer to Bento in capabilities: Tap Forms. I have the current version 5. Suzanne has been using it to maintain her Nutrimetics client database.

Re the Pages question: the latest Pages (which reinstates support for different left/right page margins) runs in Sierra and High Sierra, but not El Capitan.

Upgrading or updating Lesley’s iPhone should be no problem unless she is still on iOS 10 and has old 32-bit apps that she still needs. (Hopefully the iPhone is running iOS 10.3 or later so Settings > General > Applications can list the 32-bit apps.)

Susanna Bauer

> My needs are around general computer health and function - with an older model laptop I am nearing the end of its possibilities and I need to make sure it will carry me through my upcoming thesis project, or replace it soon if we detect some signs of failing hardware. 
> I am currently having some issues with internet browsing when I am streaming movies or Youtube - and I have tried a range of obvious ways to fix it, without success.
> I am also about to install another big software bundle, and by helpdesk time I might want to discuss whether folder organisation etc, is as it should be.
> Its really about making sure things are set up as best as can be with my equipment, so nothing too dramatic overall.

I’m not sure where Susanna is up to in terms of OS versions: she was stuck on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion for a long time due to not wanting to do major changes on her computer while in the middle of writing her thesis, which involved Zotero bibliography software which works as a combination of a plug-in for Firefox and integrates to some extent into Microsoft Office and Scrivener.

Mountain Lion is too old to run any supported web browser. OS X 10.9 Mavericks is the minimum for the current Chrome and Firefox, but they may raise the requirements in the not too distant future (probably Chrome first, as last time).

A Mac which can run Mountain Lion can definitely upgrade to OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which has a few months of security and Safari updates left (at least one and possible two more updates before macOS 10.14 is released in September and El Capitan drops off the supported list). Third party browsers should hopefully support it longer.

She has a MacBook Pro but I don’t recall exactly which model: 2.66 GHz 15-inch which might be a Late 2008, Mid 2009 or Mid 2010. Only the last of the three is able to upgrade beyond El Capitan.

Jenny Chisholm

> I have one problem with my newer Pages that might not take long to resolve.


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