Ask MacRx: Mail Message Previews, MobileMe Sync Problems, and iPhoto Duplicates

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AskMacRx-fix

In today’s high tech world, sometimes we can all use a bit of assistance. This week we’re launching a new troubleshooting column for Cult of Mac readers, Ask MacRx, to address your questions and issues about Macs and iDevices.

In today’s edition we’ll tackle restoring the Mail Message Preview Pane, more options for overcoming MobileMe sync problems, and questions about duplicates in iPhoto.

I am hoping that I can get some help from you regarding a problem I am having with Mail in Mac. I have had an iMac (version Mac OS 10.5) for over three years and have never had this happen. I was viewing my email messages and moved or clicked the mouse and, all of a sudden, instead of having a screen with an upper portion showing the inbox and a lower portion showing the current message selected, it converted to showing all the messages of the inbox, without a lower portion. Now, I have to open each message to view it, as opposed to being able to preview it without opening the message completely.

What did I do, and how can I get the old upper portion-lower portion screen back?

Thank you, Jonita

Hi Jonita,

You’ve accidentally hidden the message preview pane. There’s a slider at the bottom of the message list which you can move up and down to show the preview pane. You should see a small dot at the very bottom of the message list, when hovering over this the cursor will change shape to an up/down arrow. When the cursor shape changes click and drag the slider up to bring the preview back.

• • •

I read with real interest your article on sorting out issues with MobileMe. One of the best on the internet. I am despairing of Apple, I have emailed their support and got zero assistance back. I followed everything in your article including the instruction on opening terminal to reset but still nothing has fixed my problem.

I seem to have experienced the deleting of all contact telephone numbers but the contacts themselves are still there. I have an iPad and an iPhone and followed your advise on disabling them but still when I sync after following all the steps I still have corrupt data in mobile me and the data in contacts on my macbook pro is ok with numbers present.

Chris

Hi Chris,

The headaches with MobileMe never end, it seems; we can only hope iCloud we be our savior. If the techniques in the article didn’t help you might try erasing the data from your iPhone and iPad then syncing with the computer again. Enable the iTunes preference to Sync Address Book Contacts, this checkbox is found on the Info tab for the phone or tablet. That should force the data from your MacBook Pro onto the mobile devices. Once back on the iDevice, then try re-establishing MobileMe sync.

Backup your good Address Book data on the Mac first, to keep a safety copy. The original is located in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook. You can also Export an Address Book archive from the File menu.

• • •

Read your article about removing duplicates in iPhoto. Yes, I’ll go for the iPhoto Duplicate Annihilator and already have the iPhoto Library Manager, so far used to set up different libraries (esp. in older iPhoto versions) rather than one single monster library. A couple of questions, though:

(1) In OS 10.5.8, is a single iPhoto library what you would recommend, even though large with some 27,000 pictures now since inception of iPhoto? (I know it’s ridiculous).

(2) I have heaps of albums, some just folders with lots of jpgs in them, and imported as “albums” (i.e. by dragging them to the left side of the iphoto screen) and letting iPhoto set these albums up with whatever it does to support these albums – which in fact it does. So if I remove duplicates now, will pictures in albums corresponding to items to be removed gotten rid of as well? What I’m trying to say is there may be a real original and a duplicate in the iphoto data file, but only one in them was used (in years past, on other macs) to create an album entry. When removing a duplicate, will the link to the album be maintained or might the linked picture disappear from there as well?

Many thanks, Nick

Hi Nick,

27,000 photos in iPhoto is not uncommon in my experience, but yes it’s unwieldy. You may want to at least prune out the older items, or start fresh and keep the existing album as an archive.

If you remove photos they will be removed from any albums containing them – you will see empty squares with a ? in their places. You may have put the original or duplicate in the album, depending how it was made. I don’t know of any way to tell in advance. You may want to replace your important albums with events, merge them first, then remove dupes from there.

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