Help!

Hello, I'm on a Mac Mini running OS X Version 10.6.8. I have Pages '09 installed but recently, whenever I type something into a blank document, no text comes up. However, if I view the document in print preview I can see everything I have typed and can also print it off. No cursor flashes on the page while I am typing and my text is in the colour black.

What shall I do?

RoisinErica said:

What shall I do?

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How about first clarifying what you wrote.

recently, whenever I type something into a blank document, no text comes up.

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No cursor flashes on the page while I am typing and my text is in the colour black.

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How are those two statements not contradictory? I'm confused.

Is your font color white? But then the second statement would not make sense. Is that saying that you've checked and made sure the font is supposed to be black?

toMACAsh,

I am grateful for your involvement. I have also posted on this issue. RoisinErica is my daughter and the problems are real enough. Her Mac is crucial to college studies and I have spent many hours trying to sort the problem but to no avail.

What she meant was that she can open a blank document in pages and actually type text into without actually being able to view said text or cursor.

The text is there because the inspector tells us and for brief moments e.g when you go full screen it shows up and then disappears leaving a blank.

Please view my thread or view the content below:

"Ok,
My daughter has a Mac mini 2.26/2gB/160gB. It's currently running 10.6.8
Previous to a recent software update the main problems have been:

Pages: Text is invisible/cursor is invisible, the document is just white. Text is getting on there we can tell but she basically can't view anything. If you go full screen the text briefly can be seen and then the page goes black. The text can be seen in the icon for the document on the desktop.

iPhoto:All thumbnails can be seen but the pane goes black when she clicks to enlarge the photo for editing. A similar problem is occurring in iTunes with album artwork in the overflow missing and the pane is just black.

In short it's a nightmare. All these problems are still there even after updating to Pages 09, iPhoto 11 etc etc.

Is there any way I can solve these problems and are they connected? Do I need to uninstall/reinstall from original disks? How complicated is it to do?"

Your input would be much appreciated.
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Pendlewitch

I suppose it could be some sort of setting in Pages, but I don't have that installed. Some settings are stored in an applications plist file. Have you tried a "plist purge"?

HD/Users/Your(Her)UserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist

Take that out of the folder and put it on the Desktop. Start Pages. That makes a new, hopefully "clean" plist file for Pages. Maybe that will help. If not, you still have the original plist file, and can put it back.

toMACsh said:

I suppose it could be some sort of setting in Pages, but I don't have that installed. Some settings are stored in an applications plist file. Have you tried a "plist purge"?

HD/Users/Your(Her)UserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist

Take that out of the folder and put it on the Desktop. Start Pages. That makes a new, hopefully "clean" plist file for Pages. Maybe that will help. If not, you still have the original plist file, and can put it back.

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Hi,
Thank you.
This didn't work either in Pages or iPhoto although I've not tried iTunes yet but the problems seem to be similar.Do you have any more ideas?

I think the next step would be to try another user account on that computer. If there isn't one, create one in System Preferences > Accounts. Do a test run of the problem apps in that new account. If they work, move all files to the new account and Trash the old one.

P.S. You're not getting many replies. Could be due to the "generic" thread title you chose. Imagine if everyone did that. Some folks won't open such threads. It's far better to give a brief, but descriptive clue about the nature of your post.

Interesting, there isn't an iWork.Page.plist file in the other user account which was created for her sister's iPad.

With regards to the thread title can I change it or should I start a new thread or will that complicate matters?

pendlewitch said:

Interesting, there isn't an iWork.Page.plist file in the other user account which was created for her sister's iPad.

With regards to the thread title can I change it or should I start a new thread or will that complicate matters?

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There would only be a plist file for an application that was opened by the user.

Only the thread originator, that is the "original poster" aka OP or an Admin can change a thread title. No, don't start another thread, it would confuse matters, and thus is a violation of forum rules.

toMACsh said:

There would only be a plist file for an application that was opened by the user.

Only the thread originator, that is the "original poster" aka OP or an Admin can change a thread title. No, don't start another thread, it would confuse matters, and thus is a violation of forum rules.

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Ok.
Difficult here trying to help by proxy and the OP is not here at the moment (again!).
I have the machine on at the moment but to be honest I'm just plain cheesed off with it and considering erasing the drive and reinstalling to factory settings with the original discs.

Drastic I know, but looking at the HD, with only 26G remaining, Photos and Music files all over the place and all sorts of bolt-ons such as Spotify, Utorrent, ,MS Messenger, Graboid, PrismVideo, Firefox installed perhaps this is the way forward?

The problems appear to be cross-application, certainly I would consider the inability to use iPhoto/iTunes/Pages in any meaningful way abject.

Just to let you know I have erased the HD, re-installed OSX,Applications,iWorks and everything appears to be back to normal (although I've not run iTunes yet).

Question:- If I now install software updates is there a particular chronological order to them or should I let it roll on top of 10.6.8 ?

Software updates to what applications?

Not sure what the "let it roll" thing means.

10.6.8 is the highest update. You'd have to upgrade to 10.7 if you want a more current OS.

I mistakenly assumed the original OS Install DVD was 10.6.8 but it was 10.6.

I've installed the 10.6.8 combo update from Apple support, then a further 12 updates via software update but wasn't sure in which order I should have done them, in other words I let them roll or install after the combo update.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that all the updates you're talking about are to the OS, even though that's illogical, since I know there aren't 12 of them. So, the purpose of the Combo Updater is so that you don't have to download and install the 10.6.1 update, then the 10.6.2 update, etc. The 10.6.8 Combo Updater will update any previous 10.6.x version to 10.6.8

Updates to other applications can be done independently from the OS updates. The only thing you need to know is if a particular version of an app is compatible with your OS version.

Apologies, I may not have been clear, but it looks like I did the right thing and installed the combo update first.

This one:-http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399

Then I went Apple/Software Update and it gave 12 updates as install options, these were application specific..things like Safari, Java, etc. I can't remember them all but I installed all of them. I can't say that I checked the details of all of them though but things appear fine so far.

Thanks for trying to help.

If you followed the "advice" of Software Update, chances are good that the versions you installed are compatible with your OS.

Every thing is cool with my daughter's mini mac so far. I even got a thank you!

Wow! Now that's saying something, Dad!

Glad it all works. Hope I helped.

toMACsh said:

Wow! Now that's saying something, Dad!

Glad it all works. Hope I helped.

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Lol! Yeah thanks once again.