Tech Tips

Transcript “Hi everyone. Let’s say you’re working in Excel Online, and you find that you’re not able to see enough of the document at a time. Alright so, by saying, by Excel Online I mean in the browser, right? So this is an Excel document open in a browser. It looks a bit ridiculous of course because there’s a giant smiley face, but the idea behind this example is that let’s say I need to see many rows of data at a time, and I’m just not able to see them all in the browser… what can I do to improve the situation? In this case we’re just going to use the smiley as an example. What do I do … Read more

Description This video is a fresh take on my “Reducing Email Attachment Sizes With Compression” video, posted April 20th, 2011. Since then, things have changed – it was time to revisit it. As mentioned in the video, I had difficulty uploading the partial 7z files to Gmail as attachments. I’m not sure why – your mileage may vary. 7z would be preferable because it likely has more compression options, and even without instructions I like that searching for “7z” will inevitably lead you to conclude that it’s related to 7-zip whereas “zip” is more of a household term. I’m not sure that all applications that handle zips can handle the multi-volume approach done by 7-zip. Transcription “So let’s say you … Read more

Transcript “Hi everyone. In this video, I’ll be showing you how to convert old Office files into their newer formats. So by old files I mean the DOC extension, the XLS extension, or the PPT extension, how to convert those into their X equivalents. So DOCX, XLSX. So what happened is, in Office 2007, Microsoft introduced these newer formats, the X formats, so it’s possible that when you encounter old Office files, that you sometimes have to convert them to the newer formats – there’s a number of reasons why you’d want to do this, but let’s say you need to do this. Let’s start the Word document, let’s open it up. Once it opens up in Word, it’s actually … Read more

Most programs let you decide whether you’d like to them to open up automatically when you start Windows. Naturally, this is typically only an option when it’s logical to do so – for example, having Spotify immediately open with Windows makes sense. Having Notepad open with Windows… not so much. But what happens when a program doesn’t offer you that option, but you’d like still it to start up with Windows? Solution There’s a few ways to achieve this, but one of my preferred options is using the Task Scheduler in Windows 10.  Press the Start button, and search for “Task scheduler” or “Schedule tasks.” In the “Actions” menu on the right, click “Create Task.” On the “General” tab, specify … Read more

As much as I like working on videos, I must admit that the rendering process certainly takes a toll on a machine’s performance, particularly when you’d like to use your machine to do something else while it renders. In my case, my main computer at home is by far my most powerful and versatile machine, so when it’s locked up doing rendering for a multitude of hours, I’m faced with a terrifying prospect – actually going outside or reading a book. Determined to avoid this type of cruel fate when away from home, I started to think of ways that I could do the editing on a somewhat less powerful machine, but offload the actual rendering to my beast of … Read more

Transcript “So I was asked recently to demonstrate the basics of working with images in WordPress, particularly when you’re dealing with images that are of a high resolution. So if you look at my desktop here, I have three images. I will just display them quickly – this one, this one, and this one. Now, what they have in common is they’re all the same size… if I hover over them right here, you’ll see that they are 3200 by 2400, that’s a fairly large size, and I can demonstrate that by opening one of them in Paint. So in Paint what you see is a portion of the sky, in this particular shot, and the reason is that the … Read more

I’ve discovered I have a new passion in life, and you know what it’s all about? Helping people remove as much of the ads and sponsored content from Windows 10 as possible, assuming, of course, that that’s something they want to do to begin with. And so today, a very quick but essential tip… how do you remove the “helpful” facts and/or links that appear on the login page? Here’s an example: These icons visually pollute the lock screen image, and in many cases, Microsoft uses them to sway consumer behavior – something they’ve clearly grown fond of doing since people accepted free Windows 10 upgrades. Solution If Windows 10 isn’t doing what you want, beat it with a rolled … Read more

Transcription “Hi everyone. In this video, I’ll be showing you how to hide the Tools Pane from Adobe Reader DC. I’ll be showing it under Windows 10. So you know when you’re opening a PDF with Adobe Reader? On the right hand side, there’s this special section known as the Tools Pane. It’s an area that has several functions: Export PDF, Create PDF, and a bunch of other things. Now, generally speaking, I find this section obstructive, more than anything. So it’s in the way. I would like, for example, the Adobe Reader window to utilize the full width of the window, not just a portion of it because of this sidebar. So in order to hide the sidebar, I … Read more

So there I was, browsing the web with Chrome as I always did, when I noticed a new pop-up in Windows 10. Take a look at this: Now, as much as I like Windows for its simplicity, I have to express my total and utter disgust at this type of tactic. This is basically the corporate equivalent of a kindergardener pointing to another child and boasting how much better they are than them, in an attempt to increase their own popularity amongst the rest. And you just know that they’re using the fact that their dad is the principal to more easily get away with it. See, that’s the thing… if Microsoft actually had any ounce of fairness in their use … Read more

Recently, I finished writing a new page for my blog, and was looking to add it to the main menu. So I proceeded as I normally would – in the WordPress dashboard, I selected “Appearance,” then “Menus.” In that editor, I added the new page, and pressed “Save Menu.” Then, to my surprise, I got this error, which prevented me from saving my changes: Granted, after reading the error message completely, I realized that I was at least somewhat to blame. After all, the size and complexity of my menus were beyond anything I’d seen before in a WordPress site. I make heavy use of sub-menus. This screenshot only scratches the surface. Then again, was it my fault? Shouldn’t software … Read more