Q&A: Moving Playlists to the iPod in iTunes 11

Q.

How do you manually put a playlist on the iPod in iTunes 11? I don't want to sync them, but would like to drag the new mixes onto the iPod icon like you used to be able to do.

A.

Apple's latest version of its music-management program has a much different user interface than the previous 10 editions and may take some getting used to. Once you have made a new playlist in the program, there are a few ways to add it to the iPod.

One way is to connect the player to the computer and click the iPod button at the top of the iTunes window. Click the Summary button and make sure the checkbox next to “Manually manage music and videos” is on. Next, click the On This iPod button on the right side of the window. (If you do not see the On This iPod button, make sure the iTunes window is open wide enough to display the entire row of buttons.)

Click the Add To button on the right side of the window, which should rev eal a column showing the iPod's libraries and existing playlists. Click the Playlists button at the top of the window and drag the desired playlist from the left pane of the window to the right pane showing the iPod's contents. The playlist should copy over to the iPod.

If you preferred the look of the old iTunes program, go to the View menu and select Show Sidebar to restore that vertical pane on the left side of the window that displays all media libraries, connected devices and playlists. Once you do that, you can drag new playlists onto the icon of the connected iPod, just as before in previous versions of iTunes.

Manually adding songs, albums and videos to a connected iPod is a bit simpler. You can still click the Add To button on the On This iPod screen and drag files over if you want to do it that way. For a quicker approach, just connect the iPod to the computer, then click and select the items you want to copy over. Drag the files to the right edge of th e iTunes window. A panel opens showing the icon of the connected iPod. Drop the files on the iPod icon to add them to the player.

App Smart Extra: More Holiday Apps

As befits the date, this week's App Smart column was about Christmas-related apps. We talked about a variety of them, like photo effects or storytelling ones.

My favorite book at this time of year has always been “The Night Before Christmas,” and there's a fabulous interactive e-book version on iTunes free (Peter, Paul and Mary's “The Night Before Christmas”). It's great to read with your kids, letting them tap on the screen to activate the hidden special effects in the images - like jingling the stockings hung by the fire. You can also let the app run by itself, reading the story aloud. Older children will be able to work out how to tap the right icon to turn the page.

Fitting for a year where the “Gangnam Style” video became the biggest YouTube hit, there's a free Gangnam SantaBooth app on iOS that may tickle you. It does exactly what you think it does, placing a photo of your head (sporting a Santa hat) into an animation of a character dancing ju st like the music video. It's great for mates, but perhaps not for sending seasonal messages to grandma. For your grandmother, you might find the $2 iOS app Vintage Christmas Cards a suitable alternative; it has a hundred classic greeting card designs to download. You can e-mail them or print them out, personalize them and send them.

Android device owners can customize their devices with live wallpapers. And there are a lot of seasonal options, including another amusing animated Gangnam Santa one. One of the more elegant apps is the Christmas Tree Live Wallpaper app. It's clever enough to let you customize various aspects of the tree to suit your taste. It's free on Google Play.

If you want to track Santa on his speedy journey around the planet delivering gifts, an alternative to the popular NORAD app is Santa Tracker Christmas Free (on iOS or Android). This app graphically maps the sleigh's flight at the right time. But until then it has a lovely 3-D animated graphic of the Earth. And it follows Santa as he prepares, either organizing at the North Pole or flying to check if children have been naughty or nice. Since the animation zips to different parts of the globe, it may be a neat trick for teaching children some geography.

Quick Call

The fun app maker Toca Boca has a new $1 app for iOS and Kindle Fire: Toca Hair Salon 2, successor to the successful first edition. Like the original, but with some new tricks like better graphics and extra styling tools, the light-hearted app is about styling and preparing the hair of some cartoonish characters.

Q&A: Setting AutoSave Times In Microsoft Office

Q.

How often does Microsoft Office 2012 automatically save the file I'm working on?

A.

By default, Microsoft Office programs (which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint) are set to automatically save an open file every 10 minutes. This means that if the program crashes, the power goes out or you have some other unexpected event that disrupts your work, your file should still have all the changes you have made - except for the last 10 minutes of work. Your file may retain more recent changes if you manually saved it yourself by pressing Control+S on the keyboard or using the menu option.

If you work quickly and 10 minutes seems like too big a gap between autosaves, you can increase the frequency. To do so, click the File tab in Word 2010 or whichever Office program you are using. Click the Options icon on the left side of the screen and then click the Save icon on the next screen. In the “Save AutoRecover informatio n every” area of the box, change the number of minutes from 10 to however often you want the program to automatically save the open file. Click the O.K. button. Frequent automatic saving may slow the program down a bit, but can cause less worry about crashes.

Microsoft has a video that demonstrates how to adjust the time between automatic saves, as well as how to use the AutoRecover feature to open an automatically saved file.

A Crowd Service Gives Tips on Cloud Service

If you are looking for a cloud service, 50,000 friends would like to help you out.

The Web site Fixya, best described as a volunteer technical assistance forum, assessed more than 50,000 support requests to find the most common problems with five cloud services. Roughly 40,000 were about Apple's iCloud; the rest were nearly evenly distributed among the others.

Among Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, SugarSync and Box, each had some technical difficulties, but the one that received the most positive feedback from Fixya users is the lesser known SugarSync.

And good news for users: While SugarSync was already was considered easy to use by the Fixya community, SugarSync has recently been redesigned to be simpler still.

There is one large fly in the SugarSync ointment. It won't work with QuickBooks, a problem that was the top query for SugarSync.

Dropbox was cited by 40 percent of its audience for security concerns, followed by 25 percent for storage limits and 15 percent for syncing issues.

Google Drive drew 30 percent of its questions about missing folders, followed by 20 percent for syncing issues.

After upgrading to Apple's Mountain Lion operating system, 35 percent of iCloud users sought answers about syncing between Apple devices, while 25 percent had problems syncing with non-Apple devices.

Box users required help with uploading 25 percent of the time, cited security issues 25 percent of the time and asked about backup failures 20 percent of the time.

The entire report with solutions for the most common problems of each service can be found on FixYa's blog.