Tech Tips 2Day
October, 2014
For past issues, click here.
Quick close and shut down
Click the Alt and F4 at the same time to close open programs, shut down windows, and turn off your computer. No mouse needed!
Check your speed
Ever wonder if your Internet Service Provider's speed is slowing down or need to know how fast your connection is for a new service you'd like to add? Check out http://speedtest.comcast.net/ and you can find out.
Increase your monitor's viewing size
Use the F11 key to increase the viewing area on your monitor. Want to go back to "normal" size? Simply press it again.
Create a new page when using Word
Want to quickly add a new page to your Word document? Hold down the Ctrl key and then click the Enter key.
Quickly jump back to the beginning of a Word document
Have you ever been working in a Word document with lots of pages and you'd like to get back to the beginning of the document quickly? Just hold down the Ctrl key and click the Home key. Ta dah! You're back to the beginning of the document.
Quickly highlight an entire sentence in Word
To quickly highlight a complete sentence in Word, left-click at the start of the sentence you want to highlight. Then, move to the end of the sentence you would like selected, hold down the Ctrl key and left-click the mouse. No dragging involved!
Quickly enlarge your window content
Help students (and yourself) enlarge text on your screen by holding Ctrl + Shift + > keys. To decrease the text size, hold Ctrl + Shift + < . You can do the same if you are using a mouse by holding down the Ctrl key while using the scroll wheel: Pushing the wheel away from you zooms in; toward you zooms out.
Quickly find text on a page
Want to quickly find text in an open document? Hold down the Ctrl key and click F . A search box pops up that you can enter your information into.
A quick way to undo an error
Oops! You added something you didn't want to add or you deleted something accidently. Hold the Ctrl key and click Z and you can undo a previous mistake. Many programs will let you repeat this action so you can undo multiple times.
Quickly back up a page
You can quickly move back up a page by holding down the shift key and clicking the space bar.
Strong passwords every time
You've heard it before... choose strong passwords. But are you taking this seriously? You should have a different password for each of your important accounts. Your passwords should mix letters, numbers, and special characters. A phrase is often easier to remember than something random. For instance WDschooldayFarley!3579 would take a hacker a long time to break (which means they would be discouraged and probably stop trying to hack your account).
Backup... unless you want to lose your data
If your information needs to saved, you need to make sure you back it up. While flash drives are good for short term storage, they have a high failure rate. Use cloud storage (Office 365, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.) for more secure storage. Besides using cloud storage, I create backups on external hard drives.
Crop a picture into a shape
In Word, you can crop a picture that is a shape (for instance, a star) by left-clicking on the picture > selecting Crop > Crop to Shape and then choosing the shape you would like from the window that appears.
Get the Ribbon out of the way
To minimize the Ribbon in Word 2010, hold down the Ctrl key and click F1 . You can restore the Ribbon by repeating this action.
Add a clickable calendar to your Word document
A day may come when you would like to add a clickable calendar to your Word document. To do this, open the Developer tab > click Date Picker Content Control from the Controls group.
Where's that copy?!
Did you know that your Clipboard keeps a copy of the last 24 items that you copied? To see these items in Word, open the Home tab and then click the down arrow icon that's in the lower-right corner of the Clipboard group.
Horizontally numbered bullets
If you would like to number the column headings in a Word table, select the top row > open the Home tab > click the Numbering icon found in the Paragraph group.
Where was my last edit?
If you would like to go back to the last edit you did in your Word document, simply hold down the Shift key and click F5 .
Black screen in PowerPoint
Sometimes you may like to have a PowerPoint presentation display a black screen so the focus is on you. To display a black screen, press B or the period key. Doing this, again, will restore your presentation.
Interactive PowerPoint presentation.
Did you know that you can write on your PowerPoint presentation while presenting? Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the P key. This will change the pointer to a pen so you can "write" on your presentation. Press the Esc key to return to a pointer. Oh, yes... you may want to erase the annotations you made on the presentation. Press E to erase.
Print multiple email messages in Outlook
If you would like to print a group of email messages all at once from Outlook, hold down the Ctrl key > select File > Print > Memo Style > Print.
Excel and today's date
To add today's date in an Excel document, click in a cell > hold down the Ctrl key and then click the semicolon key.