Have you ended up with duplicate songs in iTunes that you want to remove? iTunes has a built-in “Display Duplicate” feature which can be helpful, but I prefer to use the slightly hidden “Display Exact Duplicates” feature instead. How’s are instructions on its use.

• Open iTunes.
• Hold down the Option key and then click on the File menu and select “Display Exact Duplicates”. (If you don’t hold down the option key then you’ll instead see “Display Duplicates”.
• iTunes will do a search and do its best to display pairs of songs which are exact duplicates of each other. This feature doesn’t work perfectly but it’s pretty good.
• Then to actually get rid of the duplicates you can hold down the Command key (aka Apple key) and click on each of the songs that you want to delete.
• Finally, press the Delete key.
• You’ll be asked if you really want to remove the song. Click the Remove button.
• Finally, you’ll be asked if your want to move the song file to Trash or keep it in the iTunes Media folder. You could do either but to really get rid of the file you should put it in the Trash.

Note: There is a reason why I don’t like to use  iTunes’ built-in “Display Duplicates” feature. In a nutshell, it doesn’t seem to be very effective. I think it only compares the song’s Name and Artist. There are times when one might want two copies of the same song by the same artist. For example, one might have two versions of the same song — one from the original album release and a second version from a live concert album or a greatest hits album.

If you find that iTunes’ “Display Exact Duplicates” is not adequate for your needs then I’ll direct you to two third-party products. Acertant’s Tunes Ranger and SuperSync. I’ve used Tunes Ranger to merge multiple iTunes Libraries while retaining playlists. I haven’t used SuperSync. Both products indicate that they’ll help to identify and remove duplicates.

Did you know that Apple’s Mail application automatically builds a list of all recipients to whom you’ve sent email? I think it’s very useful to review this list a few times each year. By reviewing this list you can easily add useful email addresses to your Address Book and you can delete out-dated email addresses or addresses that contain typos.

Before we review this list, it’s important to understand how this list is used by Mail. When you are creating a new email message and you begin to type a person’s name or email address in the To: field you’re typically presented with a list of email addresses which match the letters that you’ve typed. This list of email addresses is a composite of email addresses from your Address Book as well as addresses listed in your Previous Recipients list.

If you ever made a typo in an email address and then sent the email message then this incorrect email address was likely added to your Previous Recipient list. By reviewing this list you can remove such undesirable email addresses.

To view your Previous Recipient list, open Mail, click on the Window menu and select Previous Recipient. You can search this list using the search field in the upper right corner. You can also sort this list by any of the columns listed: Name, Email, Last Used. You can also sort by the left-hand most column which is not named. This column indicates if the email address is saved in your Address Book. If it is then you’ll see an icon which resembles a rolodex card. If the address is not in your Address Book then this space will be blank. I like to sort by this column to find common recipient’s whose email addresses I want in my Address Book. I then select them and use the Add to Address Book button. If you don’t typically add people to your Address Book this can be a fast way to add a whole lot of people to your Address Book.

In order to remove an email address containing a typo, I often use the search field to locate it. Then, I’ll click on it to select it and then use the Remove From List button.

I like to sort the list by the Last Used date. I’ll then review the oldest addresses listed and if I don’t recognize them then I’ll select one or more and remove them from the list too.

For years, SanDisk’s Cruzer USB flash drives have been partitioned into two parts. One part is named U3 and contains some Windows-only software that can be used to protect files stored on the other partition. This software is useless to Mac users and the U3 partition just becomes an annoyance. So, many people have wondered how they can delete this U3 partition. Until recently one needed to download and use a Windows-only application made by Cruzer. Finally, in Jan 2010, Cruzer released a Mac application which can be used to get rid of the U3 partition.

You can download the application from here.

Once it’s downloaded you can open it and start its installation. Be aware that installation will require you to restart your Mac.

After the restart you’ll find several applications in a folder named “SanDisk Cruzer” in your /Applications/Utilities folder.

Open up the application named “LaunchPad Removal Utility for Mac” and follow the on-screen instructions. I found one part of the instructions confusing. It asks if you want to backup the data. I thought it was referring to the data on the other partition, but that is apparently not the case. I figured out that it was only referring to the data on the U3 partition, not the data on the main partition where you put your files. So, I told the application to go ahead and remove the partition without backing up data. I waited 30 seconds and it finished the process successfully and all of my data on the main partition was still intact.

Even though I told you that the application won’t erase your data on the USB flash drive I still recommend that you backup the data on the USB flash drive just in case something goes wrong. I don’t want you to lose any of your data.