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apps are not opening on macbook

out of nowhere the apple apps that are on the dock on my macbook will not open or launch every time I click on it to to open and it's getting to the point that I am getting rather frustrated, what can I do? Help would be much appreciated thank you

MacBook Air (11-inch Mid 2012)

Posted on Jun 1, 2015 6:32 AM

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5 replies

Jun 1, 2015 10:52 AM in response to Gezz98

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take an action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any lines that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

Jun 2, 2015 5:52 AM in response to Gezz98

That's not the information I asked for, but I can guess what happened.

You may have run a defective third-party "utility" such as "CleanMyMac" or "MacCleanse" that purports to "clean up" "junk" files. What it really does is to corrupt the operating system and many applications.

The first thing you need to do is remove that software according to the developer's instructions. Never install it, or anything like it, again. Then see below. If you use any iWork applications, you may need to delete them and redownload them from the App Store.

If you don't already have a current backup, back up all data, then reinstall the OS.* You don't need to erase the startup volume, and you won't need the backup unless something goes wrong. If the system was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you may need the Apple ID and password you used.

There are ways to back up a computer that isn't fully functional. Ask if you need guidance.

If you installed the Java runtime distributed by Apple and still need it, you'll have to reinstall it. The same goes for Xcode. All other data will be preserved.

*The linked support article refers to OS X 10.10 ("Yosemite"), but the procedure is the same for OS X 10.7 ("Lion") and later.

apps are not opening on macbook

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