If you have a document that you need to share with someone who cannot (or should not) open the original file, then you can quickly create a PDF document from the print dialog.

1. Open the document
2. Choose File > Print or Command-P
3. In the dialog click the PDF menu button in the bottom left
4. Choose Save as PDF…
5. Save the file normally in the Save Dialog

You can then use the document as you would any other PDF file: print, email, even use Adobe Acrobat Pro to secure it and enter metadata.

But First, a Word About UNIX

You may have seen Apple touting the fact that Mac OS X is Built on UNIX. While for most Mac Users, this doesn’t enter into the practical realm, you won’t understand Verbose Mode without knowing a little bit about the UNIX foundation of Mac OS X.

The things you usually see when booting or using your Mac, like the grey screen, Apple Logo, and later your Dock and the applications you use, are just the graphical layer of the software. Behind the scenes, your Mac is issuing and following commands, outputting results, and recording events. This occurs at a level below that of the graphical layer and results in a lot of technical information output as text, usually saved in Log Files.

Verbose Mode

Starting up in Verbose Mode exposes detailed information about what your Mac is doing during the startup and shutdown routines. Instead of displaying the grey screen and Apple Logo you are used to seeing during boot, your Mac will output the results of each step of startup as text on your screen until it reaches either automatic login or the Login Window.

When to use Verbose Mode

Verbose Mode, like most startup key combos, is most useful when troubleshooting. If your Mac is failing to boot normally, you can use Verbose Mode to track down the exact point of failure.

How to use Verbose Mode

One of the challenges of Verbose Mode is that if you don’t know what a normal verbose boot should look like, you are not going to recognize an abnormal one. So only booting to Verbose Mode when you’re having problems won’t get you far. To help you out with that, here are the top 3 words and phrases you don’t want to see in Verbose Mode when your Mac fails to boot any farther.

• panic or backtrace

  These indicate that your Mac is kernel panicking during boot. If your Mac gets to this point and no further you may want to try a Safe Boot or Option Boot to another startup drive and see how far you can get.

• Still waiting for root device

  This indicates that your Mac is having trouble reading from your startup drive. A Safe Boot may correct directory problems that are preventing data access, you may need to reinstall Mac OS X, or you may have a failing hard drive.

• hanging here

  This often indicates a software issue. A Safe Boot or reinstall of Mac OS X may get you past this point.

Or, Know Your Verbose Boot

This is only recommended for the very intrepid and experienced Admins. Since the best way to recognize and abnormal verbose boot is to know a normal one, you can set your Mac to startup in Verbose Mode every time. The output of a verbose boot will vary based on Mac model and configuration, so this is only a first step is getting to know a verbose boot.

Needless to say, we only recommend doing this is you understand it, and we take no responsibility for things you do with your computer. Your admin account must be a sudoer to accomplish this. If you don’t know what this means, this is not for you.

1. Open Terminal
2. Run the following command
3. sudo nvram boot-args=”-v”
4. Exit Terminal and Restart

That’s it for our Startup Key Combo series. We didn’t cover the list exhaustively, or even each option exhaustively; that’s too deep a topic to cover here, but this is enough to get you started.

Mouse or Trackpad Button

Holding down your mouse button or trackpad button during startup is one of the most basic startup tools for your Mac, which also makes it one of the most applicable. While some the other tools we’ve discussed in this series are more useful when troubleshooting a problematic Mac, holding down the mouse or trackpad button can solve one of life’s little frustrations that happens much more frequently: a CD or DVD that won’t eject.

When to Use it

You have probably experienced a stuck disc at some point. The cause is often unknowable, but when you try to eject it from your Mac it won’t come out. Sometimes it will disappear from the Desktop and not eject, other times it may give you an esoteric error message about a disc in use.

How to Use It

It’s just as easy as it sounds, restart your Mac and hold down your mouse button or trackpad button and wait for the disc to eject as your Mac boots up. In most cases the disc will pop right out. However, if the cause of your stuck disc is hardware–that is, your Optical Drive has failed–this will not work and you should take your Mac to an Authorized Service Provider for further help.

We promised last week that is would be less involved, and as you can see, it’s a quick and easy startup option. Next week, we’ll talk about something for the more dauntless among you: Verbose Mode.

Shift Booting

Booting your Mac while holding down the Shift Key (until the Spinning Gear appears) performs a Safe Boot, which if it is successful (more an that later), will result in your Mac running in Safe Mode. If you used Mac OS 7, 8, or 9, you probably recall holding down the Shift Key to disable extensions. A Safe Boot performs a similar function in Mac OS X.

What Safe Boot Does

• Disables all non-system fonts
• Clears all font caches
• Disables all Startup and Login Items
• Loads only required Kernel Extensions
• Runs a directory check on the boot drive
• Boots to the Login Window, even if the computer is normally set to Automatic login

While in Safe Mode

• Networking and Internet will probably not work
• Many hardware functions will be disabled
• Many input and output devices will not work

Why Use Safe Boot and Safe Mode

Safe Boot and Safe Mode and very useful when troubleshooting a misbehaving Mac. There are many circumstances where a Safe Boot would be helpful.

• Troubleshooting Startup

  Performing a Safe Boot will check many of the fundamental issues that can cause your Mac to get stuck somewhere along the startup process. If your Mac won’t startup, you can power it down and boot up holding down shift. If your Mac makes it through startup, then you probably have a software problem and the next step would likely be an Archive and Install of Mac OS X. If your Mac was having startup problems and shuts down during Safe Boot, you are probably having Hard Drive issues and should get expert help ASAP because your data is in jeopardy.

• Troubleshooting Login

  For most users, it will be very difficult to differentiate between a startup issue and a login issue, but fortunately, a Safe Boot can test and eliminate some of the causes of both. If you restart or login to your computer and can see your desktop picture or dock, but can’t get any farther, a Safe Boot may fix the issue. Once you’ve successfully booted to Safe Mode, trying restarting. If you still can’t get full access to your account, your Mac probably needs some TLC from a Tech.

• Troubleshooting Font Problems

  Font problems can be very tricky to recognize and diagnose because the symptoms usually do present as directly font-related. If fonts are displaying oddly in your applications or documents, and programs like the Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office are crashing, try a Safe Boot and then test the applications and documents you were having trouble with. If they work, it may have been either bad font or bad font cache. If they continue to work after restarting again normally, you lucked out. If they fail, you have a long road ahead of you hunting down the culprit font.

• Troubleshooting Kernel Panics

  Statistically, most Kernel Panics are hardware-related but attempting a Safe Boot is a quick and easy step that can save downtime in the rare occasion that one is not. It is particularly relevant with Kernel Panics that occur during startup. If you can’t reproduce your Kernel Panics while booted to Safe Mode, you should investigate possible software causes.

• Troubleshooting Crashes

  This is a broad category, but if you have a number of third-party preference panes installed, or applications that run background processes (monitoring applications, backup applications, etc.) and are experiencing crashes, a Safe Boot can be helpful in diagnosing conflicts between these applications.

There are a lot more uses for Safe Booting and Safe Mode, but this is enough to get started. As with Option Booting, this is not a tool for everyday use, but a good arrow to have in your quiver when you need it. Next week, we’ll talk about about a less involved boot option: your mouse button.

Option Boot

Booting while you hold down the option key, often called Option Booting, takes you to the Boot Selector, which looks like the picture below.

What it Does

The Boot Selector interface displays all of the logical volumes attached to your Mac that have a bootable Operating System installed. If you do this with nothing attached, you’ll only see your internal hard drive. If you have a Boot Camp partition, you will see it as well. If you have a firewire hard drive partitioned with 3 installs of Mac OS X connected to your Mac, they will also appear.

How to Select

From the Boot Selector, you can choose any of the bootable volumes and startup from it rather than your internal hard drive. Use your mouse or arrow keys to select a drive and click the arrow indicator on screen or hit Enter to continue.

When It’s Helpful

While under normal circumstances you can use the Startup Disk preference pane to select another drive to boot from, there are times when that is not possible, or not the fastest way to select an alternate boot volume. Keep in mind that Option Booting only changes your startup disk for that startup, it does not change the startup disk preference.

• Troubleshooting Startup

  If your Mac won’t boot, for example if it hangs at the Apple Logo with Spinning Gear, then you can’t get to System Preferences to change the startup disk. To run diagnostics on your Mac, you may need to startup from your Mac OS X Install Disc, DiskWarrior Disc, or diagnostic hard drive. Inserting or attaching those discs while Option Booting will allow you choose them to boot from.

• Cold Startup

  If your Mac is off and you want to boot from an alternate volume, using the Startup Disk preference pane would require you to start your Mac up, insert or connect the volume, select it in System Preferences, and restart. By contrast, if you Option Boot first, you can skip straight to booting from your alternate volume.

• Booting to or from Bootcamp

  If you are using Bootcamp and want to boot into Windows (or were in Windows and want to boot back into Mac OS X) you can restart and Option Boot to quickly change.

• Eject a Disc

  If you have a CD or DVD stuck in your Mac, you can sometimes coax it out by Option Booting and using either your Eject Key or F12 key while sitting at the Boot Selector, even if the disc is not a valid startup disc and does not appear on screen.

Option Booting is one of the most useful startup key combinations for anyone supporting Macs in their business or troubleshooting their own Mac, but there are many more and we’ll talk about Shift Booting next week.

System Profiler

System Profiler can report your Mac’s current profile including installed RAM, drives, power information, expansion cards, video memory, and more. You can launch System Profiler from your Utilities folder or by choosing “About this Mac” from the Apple Menu and clicking the “More Info…” button.

While System Profiler can tell you about how your Mac is currently configured, there are some important things it can’t tell you.

MacTracker

Mactracker is a freeware program that keeps a database of every piece of Apple hardware ever released. Where System Profiler can tell you about your specific Mac by looking at the hardware, Mactracker can tell you about your model. Download Mactracker and launch it. You’ll see “This Mac” item in the left side of the Mactracker window.

Open the listing for your Mac that comes up in the right side of the window and click the “Memory/Graphics” tab. You’ll see the second item on the tab labelled “Maximum RAM.” Compare this to your current Memory in System Profiler to see if you can upgrade your RAM to be more productive. Explore the other tabs to discover the other useful information packed into Mactracker.

MacTracker is updated several times a year with new model information and has not yet been updated with the glut of new models Apple has already announced in 2009. Check out the other cool features like the Time Line that displays all the models released in a given year, and support Mactracker by donating on their website if you find it useful.

1. Quit all Microsoft Applications (including Office Apps, Messenger, etc.)
2. Launch Entourage normally (from your Dock or the Microsoft Office Folder)
3. IMMEDIATELY press and hold the Option Key
4. The Database Utility will Launch
5. Release the Option Key
6. Select the Rebuild database option
7. Click Continue and follow the directions

We recommend performing this rebuild process once a month to keep Entourage humming along and prevent database corruption. If you send and receive a lot of large attachments (images, pdf, etc.) then we also recommend making a habit of removing the attachments from email messages before filing or archiving them.

Open the Apple Menu and look at the items in it, then with the menu still open push the Option Key and look at the differences.

About This Mac to System Profiler

You can see that what was once About This Mac has changed to System Profiler. If you’re looking for detailed information about your computer, not just processor speed and RAM, hold down option to launch System Profiler directly from the Apple Menu.

Restart and Shut Down

At first glance it may be had to see the difference between the Restart and Shut Down menu items when holding down the Option Key, but you can see that he ellipsis have been removed. Selecting these items with the Option Key held down skips the usual confirmation dialog begins the restart or shut down of your Mac immediately.

If you command click on the title of the document or folder, you will see a menu detailing the path to the file or folder in question. This allows you to see the location, and also open any of the folders or hard drives along the way by clicking on them.

This is particularly handy when you’ve found and opened a file by way of a Spotlight search and are not sure exactly where it is saved.

Laptop batteries wear out with use, whether you use them regularly or not. In fact, leaving your laptop plugged in all the time shortens your battery life faster than giving your battery a regular workout.

To check the health of your battery, you can use the free coconutBattery, pictured below.

What’s important in this report is the Current Battery Capacity, which compares your battery’s maximum charge capacity with it’s original charge from the factory. The lower the percentage, the worse off your battery is and the better off you’ll be after replacing it.