Resolving riddles and restrictions with what you want to run on your Mac
Quick–fire questions & answers
CAN MAIL PROVIDE END–TO–END ENCRYPTION?
Yes it can, but you’ll need to use a suitable security certificate and obtain one from everyone who you want to send encrypted messages to. Those need to be installed in your keychain first. Also look at secure encrypted mail clients such as Proton Mail.
CAN I RUN PAGES AND NUMBERS IN A VM ON MY M2 MAC? Yes, although you’ll need to be careful how you copy them to ensure they run successfully. Before doing so, bring both up to date, and run them on the host. Launch your Sonoma virtual machine (VM) with the main Applications folder shared. Once it’s running, copy the apps to your VM’s Applications folder.
> Can’t add CD tracks to a Music library
This error code normally results from permissions, or a related control, preventing access to the part of your Music library that stores the converted tracks or other data from that audio CD. Before going any further, start your Mac up in Safe mode, leave it a couple of minutes, then restart it normally.
Next, open the Music app and its Settings. In the Files section there, check your Music Media folder location, and the two checkboxes below that to keep that folder organized, and to copy files to that folder when adding them to the library. You may also find it helpful to add the Music app to the Full Disk Access list in System Settings > Privacy & Security, although that shouldn’t be necessary.
If those steps don’t help, you’ll need to manually check and correct the permissions in your Music library. Start at its top level inside the folder storing it on your external drive. Select that and press Cmd+I to see the Finder’s Get Info dialog. At its foot, in the Sharing & Permissions section, ensure that you as the owner have access to both read and write permissions.
If you don’t, click on the locked padlock and enter your password to authenticate, then change those settings to give yourself, as owner, read and write permissions. Work steadily down through the different folders and files making up your library, including those that contain tracks.
> Manage document passwords
As far as we know, neither Microsoft Word nor Excel allow the use of any password manager with their documents. For an app’s password protection to work with the macOS Password Manager or its login keychain, that app has to make specific calls to macOS to permit that.
Microsoft Excel and Word don’t do that, presumably as they want to handle their own security outside macOS, so you’ll have to cont
