Can I import contacts from Address Book or Outlook into Light Blue?
We have several computers in our office, with people working on all of them. Can we share our data?
How can I get my shoot data from Light Blue into my calendar in Outlook?
How do I publish my web galleries onto my website?
Can I password protect my web galleries via Light Blue?
The £ and # keys and the @ and " keys are swapped. How can I fix this?
I get an error when publishing to Google Calendar
Are there any known bugs in Light Blue?
I'm on a Mac, and my template documents are opening up in TextEdit, not Word. How do I change this?
How do I block out holiday or meetings with people that aren't clients?
I've upgraded to Mac OS X 10.7.2 and iCal sync isn't working properly. How do I fix this?
Can I import contacts from Address Book or Outlook into Light Blue?
You can't import directly from address book software, but if you can export the details into a format that Light Blue can read (e.g. CSV or tab-separated text), you can import the result. If you're on a Mac, Address Book can't export natively as CSV, but there's a handy utility which will do it for you.
So:
As always, we'd recommend you back up your data file before you do anything involving batches like this; to back up your data file go to the Settings screen and click 'Run backup'.
I'm running the standalone version. Can I take my data with me on my laptop, then transfer it to my PC when I'm back in the office?
Yes. The machines you're transferring between need to be running the same operating system, though, so you can't transfer from a Mac to a PC or vice versa. To transfer the data file between machines:
We can't stress enough the importance of backups, especially when you're doing things with the data file.
We have several computers in our office, with people working on all of them. Can we share our data?
Yes. You'll need the hosted version. See the hosting section of the FAQ for more information.
How can I get my shoot data from Light Blue into my calendar in Outlook?
You need to do this via Google Calendar. First, set up publication to Google Calendar. (See our tutorials for how to do that.) Next, publish your shoots to Google Calendar. Finally, use one of Google's plugins to sync your data with Outlook.
How do I publish my web galleries onto my website?
Light Blue generates a folder for each web gallery, which contains all of the images, HTML pages and resources which the gallery needs to run. To publish it to your website, just FTP the whole folder up to where you want it to be.
Can I password protect my web galleries via Light Blue?
No, not via Light Blue. Because we don't host the galleries (just make the HTML) the only way we'd be able to password protect galleries is using JavaScript - and if the end user turned JavaScript off in their browser, they'd not need to enter the password, so it'd be rather useless! The way people have done it in the past is to choose an unusual, unique name for the gallery, so it's not easily guessable, and then provide their clients with a direct link to that gallery.
Of course, you can always password protect the gallery on your website (eg by using .htaccess and .htpasswd, or various other password protection methods).
The £ and # keys and the @ and " keys are swapped. How can I fix this?
This is a bug within FileMaker which affects some (but not all) Windows machines. To fix it:
I get an error when publishing to Google Calendar
Occasionally, some antivirus software can prevent publication to Google Calendar. This is because the antivirus software doesn't like Light Blue publishing information over HTTP. To see if the error's being caused by your antivirus software, try temporarily disabling it, then republishing. If the error no longer occurs, then your antivirus software is most likely to blame.
Fix for Kaspersky: Open Kaspersky. Open the 'Web antivirus' section of 'Protection'. Click 'Settings', next to 'Current Security Level'. Tick the 'Do not scan HTTP traffic from trusted web addresses, then click 'Select...'. Add http://www.google.com/* and https://www.google.com/* then OK out of all of the dialogs.
Fix for ESET Nod32: Open Nod32. Open the 'Antivirus and antispyware' section of the admin interface. Expand 'Web access protection' then 'HTTP'. Expand the 'Web browsers' section. Click the box next to the path to Light Blue until it turns to a red cross (nb not a green tick!). OK out of all the dialogs.
Are there any known bugs in Light Blue?
It's not a bug in Light Blue, but one in Google Calendar which we thought you should know about. Users of our hosting service have access to an iCalendar feed of their events. Google Calendar doesn't refresh those feeds as it should. The Google engineers are 'working on it'. See http://tinyurl.com/5worffr .
I'm on a Mac, and my template documents are opening up in TextEdit, not Word. How do I change this?
You can change the default application for opening RTF files in just the same way that you would for any other file type in OS X (e.g. getting Photoshop to be your default application for opening JPEGs instead of Preview):
All of your RTF documents will then open in Word.
How do I block out holiday or meetings with people that aren't clients?
You can create a shoot type for yourself that you can use to block out time in the diary - we suggest using the pre-installed one called 'reserved date' because that's nice and generic, but you can call it whatever you like. Don't forget to confirm anything using this shoot type by putting a date in the 'Confirmed date' field.
To book meetings with your accountant, the dentist etc., add yourself as a contact, then add meetings to yourself.
I've upgraded to Mac OS X 10.7.2 and iCal sync isn't working properly. How do I fix this?
There are four steps to getting your iCloud calendars to work with Light Blue. You'll need to be using Light Blue v3.3 or higher for this to work. Calendar publishing to separate events and reminders calendars is not supported in Light Blue: Photo v1 or v2.
When Apple released iCloud, they also changed iCal to make events live in a separate calendar to tasks (aka reminders). Unhelpfully, they also changed some behind-the-scenes data that means you need to reset the calendar to which you publish your Light Blue events.
1) Delete the calendar you're publishing your events to in iCal and create a new one. It can have the same name as the old one. I'd call it "Light Blue events".
2) If you want to publish your tasks from Light Blue into iCal, you'll also need to create what Apple call a 'Reminders List' for it. You can do that from the File menu. Call it something like "Light Blue tasks".
3) In Light Blue, go to the Settings screen and then the 'Calendars' section. Check that the name of the events calendar matches the one you created in step 1. If you want to publish your tasks to iCal as well as your events, check that the reminders calendar matches the one you created in step 2 and that 'Publish Tasks' is set to "Yes".
4) Click the 'Reset sync data' button, then click 'Sync with iCal'. This will publish all of your events and tasks to your new calendar and reminder list in iCal.