Word to PDF

Is it possible to create Acrobat PDF files direct from Microsoft Word?

Dario Mitidieri

Microsoft Office 98 for Macintosh doesn’t include the same direct access for printing to Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files as is found in many other applications, particularly those from Adobe. As with other products lacking direct PDF output options, there are ways around this.

One is to buy Adobe Acrobat, which has a PDF ‘printer’ driver that you use instead of your normal printer driver and Distiller to convert PostScript files to PDF. Another is to use PrintToPDF, a third-party alternative available by FTP from ftp.jwwalker.com.

If you opt for PostScript-to-PDF conversion, you can generate the required PostScript file by printing the document, via the LaserWriter driver, to a file. This can then be dragged and dropped onto Adobe’s Distiller application to generate an Acrobat PDF document, or you can have Distiller watch a folder and automatically convert all the PostScript files saved to that location.

PowerBook cursor

When I’m typing on my PowerBook G3, the cursor often jumps back to a previous line on its own accord. This can happen in any application, and under Mac OS 8.5 to 9. What’s wrong?

Eddie Wong

This may be because of a problem with the touch-sensitive trackpad, which is used in place of a mouse. Try connecting a mouse to your PowerBook to see if the problem persists. If it does, it may mean there’s a hardware fault in the pad or the motherboard itself. But before you blame faulty hardware, note that the most common cause of jumping cursors on PowerBooks with trackpads is user error. For instance, when you type you may be inadvertently touching the pad, and when you try to use the pad normally you may be touching it in more than one place. This can have unpredictable results, one of which is to make the point jump suddenly to another location. An excessive amount of sweat on the finger using the pad can also cause erratic behaviour. Finally, take a look in the Track Pad control panel, and make sure its settings are what you want.

Floppy disk failure

I’m struggling to recover some old files from an ‘unreadable’ floppy disk. Norton Utilities 5 and 4.4 don’t seem able to recover anything. What can I do?

Keith Edsall

Sadly, Norton Utilities’ ability to deal with damaged floppy disks has fallen significantly with recent revisions. You may well get the best results if you can find an older Mac with version 3.5 of Norton Utilities. (Never use old copies of Norton Utilities on hard disks running under newer versions of the Mac OS. However, recovering floppies shouldn’t cause problems.) Nor will you have any luck if you’re trying to use a recent model with no Apple internal floppy disk drive ­ trying to perform a repair through a third-party USB drive isn’t good news.

The big danger with running versions prior to 5 (if you’re using Mac OS 9) or 4.4 (if you’re using the extended file system, HFS+) is that you might accidentally use the old version of Norton to ‘fix’ your hard disk. This would be disastrous, as older versions can’t cope with HFS+ and are liable to corrupt the disk contents. If you still need to access the contents of legacy floppy disks, you should either move the files over to a modern, removable medium such as CD-R, or keep a floppy-based Mac ready to handle them when needed.

Memory leak

Each time I quit Microsoft Outlook Express or Netscape Navigator on my blue-and-white G3 (Mac OS 8.6, 192Mb of RAM), the computer retains lots of memory. Why can I only seem to recover that memory by restarting?

Dario Mitidieri

This is a known bug in Mac OS 8.5 and 8.6, which seems to have been cured (or, at least, made much better) in Mac OS 9. It’s common, and severe, when you have large amounts of physical memory. And it only occurs when using certain applications, including several popular Microsoft products, Netscape and other browsers.

If you check the amount of used and free memory when you first start up your Mac, it will add up properly. After using and quitting the application(s), the amount of free memory shrinks as if some has disappeared, while memory utilities (such as Memory Mapper) show the memory as being freed and available. This is because the About This Computer dialog box fails to add it back to the total amount of free memory. Eventually, this leak will prevent you from opening applications or may cause a crash.

The only way to restore free memory is to restart your Mac. There have been hacks made available over the Internet to prevent this untoward behaviour, but none can really be recommended. The best answer is to upgrade to Mac OS 9.

NT server access

When trying to save from our iMacs (Mac OS 9), running Adobe Photoshop 5.5, to our Windows NT 4 server, we get an error message saying we ‘do not have sufficient access privileges’. Other applications manage this fine, and it doesn’t happen on a blue-and-white G3 with Mac OS 8.6 and Photoshop 4. What’s the problem?

Dave Allen

This appears to be a bug in Photoshop 5.5, Mac OS 9, or perhaps in NT 4. The only way round it may be to save the files locally and copy them across to the server using the Finder. You could automate this using AppleScript or a utility, perhaps. This may become simpler if you create a special temporary folder on each iMac and apply a folder AppleScript. You should report this bug formally to Adobe, Apple and Microsoft: while it may not be fixed in the near future, at least you stand a chance of getting it fixed in the next major revision. If you’re considering moving up to Windows 2000, it will be interesting to examine this issue when you get a test server up and running.

Mac Classic

Can I upgrade a Mac Classic to System 7.5.1 using the startup CD for my Performa 5200? Can I use an Apple Design Keyboard through the Classic’s ADB?

Lawrence Davies

The Mac Classic has an ancient 68000 processor, which is very much slower than even the oldest of the PowerPC models (such as the Power Mac 6100). However, it’s a compact unit which works well in black-and-white, using older software. It will happily run System 7.5.1 or 7.5.5 (recommended), given sufficient memory.

To upgrade you should ensure it has the maximum of 4Mb of memory (RAM). However, you are very unlikely to be able to do this using a Performa startup CD-ROM, as most of these shipped with special customised Mac OS installers, which will only work on a limited range of models. The only way to add a CD-ROM drive to a Classic is to use an old external unit with a SCSI interface, such as the original Apple External SCSI 2x CD-ROM drive. You’d do best to contact a dealer or user group who can provide you with a copy of System 7.5.x on floppy disks.

The Classic has a single ADB port, to which you can connect most ADB keyboards, including the Apple Design model and ADB mice. Inevitably, obtaining spares for these older models is increasingly difficult.

Quark XPress spreads

We used to be able to print A3 spreads on our LaserWriter 8500 from QuarkXPress 3.2. However, this no longer works from version 4.1. Quark claims that our PPD is out of date, but we’re using the latest. How can we get this fixed?

Stuart Perry

Conflicts between new releases of the Mac OS, applications and printers can be extremely frustrating, as they can arise from any one of a number of different components. Inevitably, those responsible for each find it easy to blame someone else’s component, leaving the user stranded. Before experimenting with workarounds, you should ensure that such bugs are properly reported to all the relevant support systems ­ in this case, to Quark and Apple ­ giving full details, or they may never be addressed in future fixes.

Assuming you’ve checked and re-checked all the application and printer settings, your next step should be to ensure you have the latest releases of the LaserWriter printer software (with the latest printer description files), and the latest patches for XPress. If this still doesn’t help, try progressively retrograding the LaserWriter driver and PPD files until they either no longer work, or the problem resolves. If you can’t get them to work, you’ll then need to keep a copy of XPress 3.x handy, as many other users have found necessary.

Control Strip

Why do some items, such as TV Mirroring, not appear in the Control Strip, even though they are properly installed? How can I recover my Remote Access module, which has disappeared since I disabled some extensions?

Steve Kirby

When the Mac OS starts up, certain extensions, control panels and Control Strip modules are loaded and activated ­ only if there is hardware support for them and required software components are loaded. Modules such as TV Mirroring will only become available, and thus appear in the Control Strip, if your hardware can support it, and if other software on which it depends has been loaded properly.

If your System Folder has become slightly messed up, with some necessary extensions disabled, you can probably enable them satisfactorily via the Extensions Manager control panel. Either enable all extensions and control panels, or use the ‘Mac OS All’ set (although that will turn off third-party extensions and so on).

If they still don’t work properly, the software confusion within your System Folder may be more extensive, possibly due to missing items. It may be best, then, rather than wasting hours trying to sort things out manually, just to re-install the Mac OS properly.

Word macro virus

I received a Microsoft Word 97 document containing macros. This was opened using Word 98 for Mac and pasted into ClarisWorks 5, and virus checks have been clear on the Mac then and since. However, when I forwarded the original document to a PC user, they reported that it contained the virus ‘W97EthanA’. Would the ClarisWorks file also have been infectious?

Gavin Thomson

Macro viruses are simply little programs, written in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which have malicious intent. Because they’re attached to Microsoft Office documents, they’re easily spread, and may be innocently downloaded when attached to important Word or Excel documents. It sounds as if the Word document which you received had such a virus attached to it, and although (as is usually the case) it didn’t affect your Mac, when you sent it to a PC user, it infected them. VBA macros aren’t able to run in the ClarisWorks environment, nor will they be copied across when you copy the contents of a document over to ClarisWorks. As such, your ClarisWorks document won’t contain any viral code. You should, however, ensure that you keep your virus checker up to date, as Office macro viruses are extremely common and ever-changing.

FireWire to iBook

Is there any way of connecting a FireWire device to an iBook yet?

David Beverley

No. And although there’s no clear physical reason that will prevent someone from developing one, you should neither hope for one soon, nor think it will be of much use should it ever arrive. This is because the FireWire (IEEE 1394) interface is very sophisticated and much quicker than USB. If someone does bring out a USB-to-FireWire converter, it will inevitably work at slow, USB transfer-speeds, and so be bitterly disappointing.

(NOTE: the latest iBooks now include FireWire. - editor)

Locked hard disk

I’ve found MacUser’s Ultimate Mac Survival Kit CD-ROM a wonderful resource, but fell foul of the LockHD utility. Shortly after running it my Mac crashed, and now it crashes whenever I try to start up. How can I get it going again?

Kath Thomas

LockHD is a simple utility which makes your startup disk read-only. You can use this as a temporary measure if you’re going to run software which could corrupt the contents of the disk, or if you want to test the disk out as if it was a (read only) CD-ROM. However, if your startup disk is set to read-only when you try to start up from it, your Mac will be unable to load any extension that updates settings on disk. This is why it crashes before completing start up ­ and why the program comes with a warning to use it with care! LockHD runs hidden in the background when launched, and if the Mac is shut down or restarted normally it automatically unlocks the disk before it quits. However, if your Mac restarts ungracefully, such as after a crash, unlocking isn’t performed. The best way around this is to start up with all extensions off (hold down the shift key during start up), which should work without crashing. Then run LockHD again and restart your Mac normally. LockHD will toggle the hard disk back to its unlocked state and you should be back to normal.