Force Spotlight to rebuild search index on macOS Sonoma and later
I had a Mac recently that was really playing up with Spotlight. So much so that I couldn't even drag Macintosh HD into the Search Privacy window as it came u...
Read post →Our thinking
Blog
Technical notes and observations from years of supporting creative businesses on Mac.
Unable to install Microsoft Print to PDF printer on Windows 11 24H2 - Error 0x800F0922
I had an issue recently where a fresh install of Windows 11 24H2 was unable to use the Microsoft Print to PDF printer. It was showing as installed in Optiona...
Read post →Recover password for Mac saved in Apple Remote Desktop
A client of mine has got a couple of servers that I haven't touched in years and somewhere along the line I've lost track of the login credentials for them....
Read post →Change 3CX System Owner via ssh on v20
I recently took on a new client and in the process migrated their 3CX instance onto a new host as part of their onboarding process. In doing this, I took a b...
Read post →Work out temporary Apple ID after enabling Federation in Apple Business Manager (ABM)
I had a company-owned MacBook Pro that was locked to an Apple ID using a company email address. Whilst I had the Apple ID password, I only discovered that th...
Read post →Unzip multiple zip files with unicode filenames inside the archive
I had a bunch of zip files from a Google Takeout that I needed to extract on macOS and deal with the contents. As it turns out, a LOT of the files in the arc...
Read post →Sort Firefox Containers Alphabetically
I use Firefox containers a lot when I'm working for a number of different clients - e.g. I'll have a container in Firefox for each regular client so I can lo...
Read post →Flatten fillable PDF Form from Acrobat on macOS
I was recently dealing with needing to fill in a PDF form and then supply it to someone as a flattened PDF so that they couldn't (easily) edit it. I don't kn...
Read post →Synology Cloud Sync can't sync to Dropbox after upgrade to Dropbox Team Space
I've had a couple of clients with a Synology syncing to Dropbox via Cloud Sync and after Dropbox upgraded their tenancy to use the new Dropbox Team Space, sy...
Read post →Unable to create PDFs from Office apps on Windows. Error log states: Aptos not found, using Courier.
Microsoft have recently changed the default font in Office to Aptos . Apart from the visual changes, this seems to cause problems with Acrobat Distiller and...
Read post →Fix Synology Universal Search (synoelasticd) with high CPU usage
I've got a few decently-specced Synology servers out there that seem to be constantly running with nearly 100% CPU usage caused by synoelasticd. This task is...
Read post →Emails in Microsoft 365 landing in Inbox and then going to Deleted Items after a few seconds
I have a client with a strange, ongoing issue with their email. Particular emails – in this case invoices I send them from Xero, land in the Inbox and then a...
Read post →Fix an issue with an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro with incorrect date and time
I've seen a couple of Apple Silicon MacBook Pros recently with an incorrect date and time set, even though "Set time and date automatically" is switched on a...
Read post →Dropbox is finally native on Apple Silicon
As of December 2023, Dropbox have finally updated their app to run natively on Apple Silicon. They say that you're supposed to be updated to it automatically...
Read post →WireGuard macOS App without the App Store
WireGuard is an excellent, secure and fast VPN with full support for macOS. It is frustrating however that the official macOS app is only made available via...
Read post →Allow non-admin users to use WireGuard on Windows
It's frustrating that out of the box WireGuard only allows admin users to open the main WireGuard window. The error you receive says "WireGuard may only be u...
Read post →Fix Microsoft Forms that are locked as being identified for phishing
I've had a client creating quite a few forms on Microsoft Forms recently and quite inexplicably two of the forms were locked by Microsoft as being phishing....
Read post →Fix for "The Sent Items folder contains the maximum number of allowed items..." in Outlook
If you've got a lot of email in Outlook on Windows, you'll sooner or later come across a rather cryptically worded error message that doesn't really clearly...
Read post →Force Synology Drive to re-index changes
Synology Drive occasionally gets out of sync when you're making changes at both ends of a synced folder. Fortunately, there's a command you can run, either o...
Read post →Count Files
This script will count the files in the current directory and all the subdirectories - it's useful for checking if you have sync issues with Dropbox as Dropb...
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