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Removing Entries from the Microsoft Office Apps Recent Files Lists in macOS

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Every so often – usually around the time of a major new macOS release – I perform a clean install of the OS on my Macs. Along with restoring user data I tend to restore the configuration data of certain applications including the Microsoft Office applications. While this is a great timesaver, it can also cause some unexpected results. For example, the Recent file lists in Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Let’s use Word as an example.

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Automator Action to Toggle the Display of Desktop Icons in macOS

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It’s no secret that Desktop icons can be hidden in macOS, but unlike many user-configurable options neither System Preferences nor the Finder‘s preferences provide a way to toggle their display. It’s true that the Desktop display of drive icons and some device icons can be controlled through the Finder, but in this context Desktop icons refer to all icons shown on the Desktop including those that represent folders, files or symbolic links.

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Using Terminal to Find Your Mac’s Network Name

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Your Mac’s network name forms part of its network address. If you want to share your Mac’s files and folders with other computers on your network you’ll need to know its network address so that those other computers can connect to it. This information is readily available in System Preferences, but this article looks at how to get your Mac’s network name using the command line.

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Add a Recent or Favorites Folder to Your Dock Using the macOS Terminal

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Type the query add recents dock terminal into any Internet search engine and most – if not all – relevant entries on the first results page will give the following code or a slight variation of it:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{"tile-data" = {"list-type" = 1;}; "tile-type" = "recents-tile";}'; killall Dock

 

 

Most of these articles are from 2015 or earlier and the Mac OS has changed a lot since, but the code still appears to do exactly as advertised.

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Using the Cloudflare API to Manage DNS Records

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I’m probably doing Cloudflare a disservice by categorising it as a CDN provider, but that’s certainly one of the many services they offer and perhaps how most individuals using their free offering see them. Like me, I’m certain the vast majority of that group use the Cloudflare dashboard to configure their domains, but Cloudflare provides an API that allows you to programmatically manage those DNS records through a command-line interface of a *nix shell such as Bash.

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Secure Erasing a Mac Fusion Drive

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Before selling my late 2015 27″ iMac Retina 5K I wanted to secure erase its 1TB Fusion Drive consisting of a 24GB SSD and 1TB HDD. Secure erasing an HDD is simple enough using the Security Options in Disk Utility, but for Fusion Drives and SSDs this option is not available. To secure erase the iMac’s HDD I first needed to break the Fusion Drive into its constituent parts using Terminal.

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