If you’d like super-fast and easy way to open the items/programs that are pinned to your Taskbar in Windows 10, here’s how:
– Look at the Taskbar and note which number order (left to right) the item/program is that you’d like to open.
– Use the keyboard shortcut Windows key + [Number key], with the number key corresponding to the position of the pinned program on the Taskbar. For example, Windows key + 2 will open the second pinned item on the Taskbar.
If you’d like to change your default Windows 10 web browser from Edge to Chrome or Opera, here’s how:
– In the ‘Start’ menu and select ‘Settings’ or type ‘Settings’ in the Windows search field.
– In ‘Settings’, select ‘Apps’, and select ‘Default apps’ on the sidebar.
– Scroll to the ‘Web browser’ section and select ‘Microsoft Edge’.
– Choose which browser you’d like to set as your default choice e.g., Google Chrome.
Here’s how to use the Reading Pane and Spacebar in Outlook to sort through your daily emails more quickly:
– In Outlook, select “View” and “Reading Pane.”
– Select the Reading Pane to sit on the right-hand side.
– Select the top email in your inbox.
– Press the Spacebar so that Reading Pane will scroll down to reveal the lower section of your email and email chain.
– When you have reached the bottom of the email, the Spacebar will then take you to the next email in your inbox.
– Use the “Delete” key as you go through to remove emails that don’t need to be actioned.
– Use the Spacebar rather than the mouse to go through your remaining emails.
If you’d like a fast and easy way to remove the distractions of ads popping up in and around the frame when watching YouTube videos, here’s how:
– Select any video on YouTube.
– Insert “_popup” between the word “watch” and the question mark the in YouTube URL and click on enter.
– You can now watch a full screen, uninterrupted YouTube video.
If you’d like a tidy, easy way to see your Gmail emails and Microsoft emails all in one place in Windows 10, here’s how to set it up:
– Click on ‘Start’ and type ‘Mail’, and select the Mail app.
– Open the app, right hand side click “+ Add account” and select Google/Gmail from the list.
– Enter your Gmail login details and complete any security verification.
– Click on ‘Allow’.
If you need to search just one domain for a particular search term, here’s how to use Google to do just that:
– Go to Google.com.
– Enter site: www.website.com search term into the search box e.g., site:bbc.co.uk painting.
– Refine your search.
If you’d like to know a fast way to minimise all your open windows with one click in Windows 10, here’s how.
– Look at the bottom far right-hand side of the screen, to the right-hand side of the ‘notifications’ icon. You will see a tiny, vertical line.
– Click on the line and all your open desktop windows are instantly minimised.
– Click on the line again to restore/maximise all the windows.
If you’ve copied and pasted several items today but need to quickly and easily go back and use something you pasted earlier, you can use the clipboard history in Windows 10. Here’s how:
– To open the clipboard history, press the Windows logo key + V (and then select Turn on if it’s not on already).
– Find the item in the list (most recent at the top) and select it. Once selected, this is automatically copied back onto the clipboard and can be pasted again.
– To remove any items from the clipboard history list, click on the three dots next to the item and select ‘delete’.
– If you’d like to sync your clipboard items to your computer and access them from any other Windows 10 device, select Start > Settings > System > Clipboard and then select ‘On’ under ‘Sync across devices’.
Google Tasks (like Microsoft To-Do), which is already built into Gmail and Google Calendar offers an easy way to create simple to-do lists. Here’s how to use it:
– Sign-in to Google, open Calendar, and click on the ‘Tasks’ symbol (right-hand side, blue circle with pen symbol).
– Click on “Add a task”.
– Add the title, details, date, and time, and click on the tick/complete link. You will notice that it has then been added to your calendar.
– For bigger tasks, click on the three-dot symbol next to the task name (right-hand side of Calendar), select ‘Subtask’, and add each subtask of the main task including time and date.
– When a task is completed, right-mouse click on it in Calendar and select ‘Mark completed’. This will put a line through the task.
– In Calendar, clicking on the yellow light bulb symbol enables you to add notes via Google Keep.
If you’ve ever wanted to click on a link to a website but wanted a way to check first whether its spam or worse, here are five ways to safely check:
1. Check the status of a website URL using Google’s Transparency Report, which harnesses Google’s Safe Browsing technology. See: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?hl=en
2. Use URLVoid to check a website’s reputation and detect potentially malicious lnks. See: https://www.urlvoid.com/
3. Use ScanURL to check a website for malware, phishing, viruses, and poor reputation. See: https://scanurl.net/
4. Check any link that you suspect is a phishing site by using PhishTank. See: https://www.phishtank.com/
5. Use VirusTotal to scan a web page for malicious links: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/
