If you’d like a fast and easy way to navigate within YouTube, here are some top keyboard shortcuts.
– While watching a YouTube video, use the following letters on their own on the keyboard (no need for shift) for the following functions: F (full screen), K (play/pause), J (rewind 10 secs), and L (fast-forward 10 secs).
– Shift+P plays the previous video.
– Shift+N plays the next video.
If you’d like to save time by making your most often used and/or favourite pages load automatically whenever you open Google Chrome, here’s how:
– In Chrome, click on the three dots top-right and select ‘Settings’.
– In the left-hand menu select ‘On startup’.
– Select ‘Open a specific page or set of pages’.
– Click on ‘Add new page’ and add the URL of each page you’d like to load automatically load in separate tabs when Chrome is opened.
Microsoft Excel is still one of the world’s most widely used data tools and a new feature (for desktop), ‘Data from Picture’, means that you can now import a picture of a data table and convert it into a usable one within Excel. Here’s how:
– Save a cropped-down screenshot of an excel data table.
– Open Excel and go to the ‘Data’ tab (top menu).
– Select the (new) ‘From Picture’ option (top menu).
– From the drop-down options choose ‘Picture from file’.
– Select and click ‘insert’. Right hand side of the screen will show as collecting and preparing data.
– Click ‘Review’ or ‘Insert Anyway’ if happy you’re happy that the table produced is accurate.
If you regularly use Gmail, switching-on ‘Smart Compose’ in your Gmail settings can enable time-saving predictive writing suggestions to appear as you compose an email. Here’s how to switch it on:
– In Gmail, top right, click on the cog icon – Settings > See All Settings.
– Scroll down and ensure ‘Smart Compose’ is toggled on.
– While composing an email, if the predictive suggestions look good, click on the ‘tab’ key to accept them, and they will automatically be added (saving you time).
– To make Gmail’s predictive suggestions more relevant and closely related to your writing style, in the same section of ‘See All Settings,’ toggle on ‘Smart Compose personalisation.’
If you’re using Microsoft Word and you need to put a list in alphabetical order based on the second word in each list entry, e.g. by surname in a list of names, here’s how:
– Highlight the text list.
– Click on the A-Z button in the top menu (Home > Sort), and ‘Options’ (bottom left list).
– Select ‘Other,’ delete and any characters in there, press the spacebar (moving the cursor one space to the right), and click on ‘OK.’
– In the dropdown ‘Sort by’ menu, select ‘Word2’, and click on ‘OK’.
– The list will now be re-arranged into alphabetical order for the second word / surname.
If you’d like an easy way to get a text transcript of your YouTube videos, try using YouTube’s built-in transcript tool, here’s how:
– Log in to YouTube and go to YouTube Studio.
– Select Subtitles from the sidebar (left).
– Select a video, choose the language, and click on ‘Confirm’.
– To edit the text transcript that appears on the screen, select ‘DUPLICATE AND EDIT’ (right-hand side).
– Edit the transcription in the dialog box and click on the ‘PUBLISH’ button.
– The transcript will be lowercase and lacking punctuation so this will need to edited and amended manually.
Here are 3 tips/tricks for Google Chrome to help with queries and searches that can be typed directly into the address bar (also known as the Onnibox):
Find websites that are similar
– For example, type related:bbc.co.uk
– This will deliver results showing similar (media) websites.
– The same type of search can be carried out for any website.
Use Google Chrome as a calculator
– Type in the required calculation For example, 2*3+8.
– The returned result will show the answer (14) loaded into calculator which you can use for more calculations.
Use a search term and site: to search a specific website for specific term
– To look for specific reference for a term in a whole website try, for example, Sandwiches site:bbc.co.uk
– This should return all the pages in the site where that term is used.
Your browser may have a Password Manager but sometimes an issue (e.g., conflicting extensions) may cause the browser not to save or remember your passwords. Here’s how to fix the issue for popular browsers Chrome and Edge:
For Google Chrome:
– Open the Chrome menu (the three dots top right) and select ‘Settings’.
– Select ‘Autofill’ on the sidebar.
– Choose the option labelled ‘Passwords’ (left side of the Settings screen).
– Turn on the ‘Offer to save passwords’ switch.
For Microsoft Edge:
– Open the Edge menu (the three dots top right) and select ‘Settings’.
– Select ‘Passwords’.
– Turn on the ‘Offer to save passwords’ switch.
If you’d like to be able to mark up, annotate and share screenshots, here’s a fast and easy keyboard shortcut that lets you do just that.
– Hold down Win + Shift + S and select (click and drag the square) to select a screenshot of the area to annotate.
– Click on “Select here to markup and share the image”.
– With the image now open in the ‘Snip & Sketch’ app, use the pen tools to annotate the image.
– Once your image is annotated, click on ‘save’ or ‘share’ (top right), or on the three dots for the ‘print’ option.
If you’d like an easy way to organise all your Google Chrome browser bookmarks, try putting them in folders. Here’s how:
To create a bookmark folder:
– On your computer, open Chrome.
– Top right, click on the 3 dots, then ‘Bookmarks’ and ‘Bookmark manager’.
– Top right, click on the 3 dots and ‘Add new folder’.
OR
– If you use the bookmarks bar, right-click the bookmarks bar and click on ‘Add Folder’.
To add your bookmarks to the folders:
– Top right, click on the 3 dots, then ‘Bookmarks’ and ‘Bookmark manager’.
– Drag a bookmark up or down or drag a bookmark into a folder on the left. Also, you can copy and paste bookmarks in the order you want.
– If you use the bookmarks bar, you can drag your bookmarks into the order you want.
