Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Guessing you mean change the extension after saving the file?

Which does work, but that leads to the next problem - I can't configure the Mail application as when I enter my details it says that the account is already signed in, so I can't proceed, but I have no idea what that means (signed into what?) so I am stuck again. For whatever reason it won't open it using Outlook, which is also installed.

Yep, after you've already saved it, then you'll get the option of whether to use .eml or keep .rtf

In the preferences for Mail in the general tab you can choose your default email app, you should see outlook in the drop down if it's installed.

Ah, ok - done that, opened it in Outlook, it's not worked as it works on a windows machine, looks like this is an area that requires a totally different approach, and I don't know what that approach is. Rats.

Thanks for the help!

No worries, what's the main difference you're finding. It's not something I've ever done before I just know stuff like that usually works.

Normally I do this:

Write email in Outlook, send to my Gmail account
Open the email in Gmail, then "show original" which gets you the email as a text file, copy and paste that into Notepad.
Edit in Notepad, save as EML
Double click on the file, opens as an Outlook message, screenshot that, bang into presentation.

In the Apple world that breaks down at the final stage - it doesn't save as a file that then opens correctly, it doesn't populate the fields etc, just opens as a load of text and HTML in a blank email

However, I've found that I can write the email in Outlook on the Mac, but then instead of sending it just save it, open that .eml file in TextEdit, edit it, then save and open the file in Outlook - screenshot that, bosh.

So that's nice.

Now - I need a basic image editing program, what's good? Just to crop images, cut stuff out, blur names etc.

The stock image editor in Preview can do a lot, click the toolbox symbol to open it

Cool, glad you've got that bit sorted. As Sumo has just said, preview is pretty good, the only thing it cant do is blur, but if you select a range and hit delete it will remove that part of the image.

One task that I have to perform frequently is creating mock emails

I suspect a lot of people on here do that. It's a shame there isn't an LFGSS version of MSOutlookit:
http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/

I suspect many of us have felt like we're writing mock emails at some point in our career.

Looking to swap my French key board (USB wired, aluminum, with numeric key pad, used but in excellent working order, Mac obviously) with a UK version of it! I inherited it at work from a French colleague who left, but it's making life slightly difficult...

I could write you a mock email right now

In fact I can mock you in the format of your choice

@Dammit what context are these emails in? Are they purely visual for presentations? Can you show an example (with whatever needs redacting redacted)? The way you're suggesting seems genuinely mad. To the point that I worry for you. Not that I haven't always.

At a very low level of detail, the evolution of effective perimeter security (as it applies to email) went along these lines:

One. Spam and basic malware, which was a big problem but was fixed using (essentially) heuristic methods: I know thing A is bad, how similar to thing A is this thing, B, which I have just been given? Beyond a certain level of congruence thing B will be condemned/blocked.

This was fine, but like all successful techniques it applies an evolutionary force to the environment - and the attackers moved to:

Two. Otherwise innocuous emails (i.e. not identifiable using a heuristic analysis as malicious or spammy) which contained URL's which, when visited, compromised the machine of the visitor and email which contain sophisticated malware - Office document containing macro's which download a file, zero-days (rarely) etc etc, for which there was no published signature, therefore the techniques employed in Perimeter 1 were ineffective - which leads to the mitigation techniques of Perimeter 2, namely a behavioural analysis where we take an email and run it through a sandbox and trigger the file/visit the URL. We don't need to know what it is, we just need to see what it does, and if what it does is malicious then we condemn it.

This was highly effective, still is to be honest - but again it applies a Darwinstic force to the situation and the attackers again evolve:

Three. Emails that are functionally identical to a legitimate email, but are designed to make the person to whom they are addressed perform an action that is to the benefit of the sender. Most typically the email is configured so that it looks as if it was sent by the CEO of an organisation, and is sent to (say) the CFO, requesting that a transfer of funds is executed, to a an account under the control of the attacker. What facilitates this is that every part of an email bar the sending IP is declarative, and the sending IP is meaningless to the vast majority of receivers. I'm making examples of this type of email, to indicate the nature of the threat, which we can resolve by ensuring that all legitimate email sent from that organisations domains are authenticated using two contrasting methods- one key based and one path based. If an email presents itself and doesn't have one of these two methods of authentication present and correct it is deleted. This final (for now!) perimeter is the deterministic perimeter, and it complements the previous two.

Make sense?

Yeah but how are you visually displaying it? Why do you need to write it, send it, save it, open it, screenshot it? Can't you just edit the image with photoshop or write the email then screenshot it?

I don't have Photoshop, but if this is easy to do in Photoshop then it sounds like a logical thing to investigate.

"Write the email then screenshot it" is what I'm doing at the moment, albeit with a few interstitial steps. If you know how to do it more simply then I'm all ears.

I'm displaying it in Powerpoint, typically.

Write the email in your chosen visual domain. Command + shift + 4 + Cursor to select area?

And then the evernote plugin Skitch to pixellate elements of the png you'll have sitting on your desktop.

And yes, it would be easy, though possibly time consuming to do the first mock-up (but subsequent versions would be very quick) in Photoshop.

I have a boxed copy of CS6 if you like.

Alternatively, take a screenshot of a blank email, place into PowerPoint and simply set up text boxes in the fields then fill with required text. Once done there's your template. Unless I'm missing something?

Basically you should take your mac back to the shop and buy an etch a sketch

Ah, this sounds clever.

An etch a sketch won't keep my lap toasty warm though.