Q. When I choose a printer, I see the same printer twice when running Classic. One of the printers I see doesn’t work. How do I get rid of the second printer?

A. Many users still required Classic to run legacy applications. They could be sales or accounting applications, which may never be written for Mac OS X. By the way, Classic is not supported on the new Intel Macs – they’re “greyed out” so you can’t open them. The double printer you’re seeing is the result of setting up the printer twice.

Normally you would setup a printer using the “Printer Setup Utility” (located in the Application’s Utility folder). You could choose Print from a Mac OS X application and choose “Edit Printer…” from the pull-down list of printers. When the “Printer List” appears, you choose Add and Browse for a printer. When you select a printer, your Mac will attempt to find the appropriate PPD (Postscript Printer Description). You should note that if it can’t find it, you can manually choose one by navigating to the PPD file. If you want the Mac to find it, put it in “/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lprog”. You can also rename the printers in the Print Setup Utility, if you have more than one printer of the same model.

The next time you start Classic, it will review the Mac OS X printer list you’ve built and make those printers available to Classic applications. The older applications can use the Mac OS X printer queues. However, when you’re in Classic mode, (you’ll see the old multicolored Apple in the top left corner), some applications require you to set up a printer with the “Chooser.” These applications cannot use the Mac OS X queues. When you create a “Classic” printer queue using the Chooser, you’ll see the printer only in Classic.

The only way to remove the doubly defined printer is to Trash the “LaserWriter8 Prefs” file from the Printing Preferences (located in the System Folder’s “Preferences” folder). Remember, when you restart Classic, it will rebuild the LaserWriter 8 Prefs when it starts.

If the Mac OS X print queue loses your job, then the Classic application doesn’t support this method of printing. You’ll have to use the Chooser to set up the printer and you’ll be seeing double again. You can always rename the Mac OS X queue as mentioned above.

Q. I’ve recently switch over to Mac OS X Mail and I want to import my mail. Is there a way to get my old messages or are they gone forever?

A. There are a couple of methods for importing some or all of your messages. Mac OS X employs the standard “mbox” format for email. Mbox is an old UNIX format for storing email messages. The messages are concatenated (a ten-dollar techie word meaning joined one after another) starting with a “From” and ending with a blank line. Apple’s Mail, Microsoft’s Entourage and Mozilla’s Thunderbird, all support mail in this format.

If you’re coming from a PC (it’s about time if you are) and you’re using Microsoft Outlook, you can install Mozilla’s Thunderbird (or Netscape Mail) and import your messages. The mbox messages will be stored in your Mozilla folder in your folder under Documents and settings. You can send the files that have the same name as your Mail folders (ignore the .msf files – they’re indexes). Add “mbox” to the end of the files (you can do this when they’re on your Mac).

If you’re coming from a Mac, you’ll find your messages in various places depending on your program. Netscape stores messages in “/System Folder/Preferences/Netscape Users/[your name]/Mail.” Again, as on the PC, the mbox files don’t have the “.mbox” extension. Most of the newer mail applications store messages in your “Documents” folder. On Mac OS 9, the Documents folder is at the top level of the hard drive. On Mac OS X, you’ll find the Documents folder in your home folder (“/Users/[your name]/Documents).

When you’ve copied your mbox files to your mac, launch the new mail application and drag and drop the mbox files onto the messages pane. In Entourage, drop the files on “On My Computer” and they’ll import into your “Database” file (which is in “Microsoft\ User Data/Office X Identities/Main Identity”) in your home folder. If you’re using Mail, you can choose Import from the File Menu and then select “Other” from the list. You will then navigate to the folder which contains your “.mbox” files so that they can be imported.  

Timothy Mitra assists companies in mastering information technology in pre-press, print and web design. Do you have a question you would like answered by the IT guy? Please contact him at: E: tim@it-guy.com C: 416-278-8609