Computer Era

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Quick Productivity Tips For Every Microsoft Outlook User

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Even though Gmail is the most popular email service Outlook remains one of the best email platforms for professional purposes.  This service from Microsoft even comes with a lot of productivity tools packed in it that helps you to save a lot of time. Here are a few tips that can add up to your features of the Outlook.

Outlook Tips You Should Know

Mark messages as read:

This email service will keep the messages as unread if you just open them and delete without moving to the other message, but this will create you a confusion about the messages, so avoid these things change your mail settings and let it mark as read immediately after open the mail.

For this, you need to open File>Options>Mail. Now click the reading pane button under the outlook panes. Here you should make sure that the ‘Mark items as read when viewed in the reading pane’ dialogue box is checked and in the number of seconds box enter 0.

Create new emails with copied text:

If you have something copied on your clipboard from the browser, document, or another email, or from somewhere on your computer and you want to send it as an email to someone, then you just click CTRL + V anywhere and it creates a new email with your copied text as its body.

Turn Off notifications with exceptions:

Completely turning off the email notifications of your Outlook mail will not be a good idea. The email service has a feature where you can turn off the notifications with some exceptions.

You need to go to File>Options>Mail, under the message arrival option check whether all the options are unchecked.

You can even create some rules for receiving notifications from particular important persons. Select the mail from the particular mail id or person and right click it, then select Rule>Create Rule. Here set up the settings as per your requirements. You can even use this option for creating conditions regarding the subject line and the level of importance.

These tips for Microsoft’s mail service will surely help you a lot.

Surprising notepad tricks that everyone should try

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Windows Notepad is a basic writing application that is very much neglected I guess. Everyone knows that Windows Notepad as just a basic writing app which gets dominated by the various other feature filled applications. Actually notepad is powerful than what it actually looks like. Here are some surprising things that everyone should know about Notepad tricks, that are useful tips.

Get Line Count:

To view the number of lines in a Notepad document, you will have to display the status bar first, for that you have to View menu and then check whether the status bar option is checked. Windows Notepad even has a GOTO option just like the Microsoft Word and you can use it by just pressing CTRL + G, which opens the dialog box and there you can type the exact line number that you want to go to.

Find the Windows Product key:

You can retrieve your Windows Product key using a simple trick on Windows Notepad which is just copy and paste the following code in Notepad and save it with the extension .vbs

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))

Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function

 

When you open this file, it will show you the windows product key.

Test your Antivirus:

Find how safe your PC is under the surveillance of your antivirus program. Just use this simple trick. Save the following harmless code of text in your Notepad.

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Your Antivirus software should pick it up as a malware and should take action accordingly. This will be small test for your antivirus software to know whether it is functioning properly or not.

So these are some surprising things that you can do with the Windows Notepad.  Do try these Notepad tricks and start using Notepad in a differently useful way. Useful tips in Notepad can be useful to you.

A search engine with awesome features that Google doesn’t have

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Google search is a king that we can say without any doubt. And it has many awesome features that I have mentioned in my earlier articles. But it still lacks some features that the DuckDuckGo search engine is offering us. So why don’t we try it as well. Here I am going to tell you about the most interesting features that the DuckDuckGo search engine has.

Search using bangs:

You can search many popular websites right from the address bar itself by using these bangs. For example if you want to search computer era, use the bang !computerera or !ce followed by your search query and then if you press enter, you will be directed to the computer era results page.

For YouTube, the bang is !yt, and for Gmail !gmail, and there are currently about 8413 bangs available.

Get Cheatsheets:

Type a particular app name, operating system, or any service name followed by cheatsheet and then press enter which will present you with the cheatsheet of the particular app, service or platform that you have asked for. But you have to be a bit specific while asking.

Check websites whether they are down:

You are trying to open a particular website but you can’t, in that situation you would have wondered and doubted whether the website is down for others as well or not. In such case you can even check the status of the website if it is down or not. Just type is <website> down and it will give you the result instantly.

To turn the instant answers feature just go to Settings>General>Instant Settings>On. Make sure it is on and you can generate passwords, find coupons and check websites.

Colour Codes:

You want colour codes and looking for them one by one is not good. DuckDuckGo gives you all the colour codes of all the colours just in one table if you just search with the keyword colour codes.

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Switch Text Case:

This feature is actually find in word and other text editing apps or softwares but not in any browser. But DuckDuckGo has it, it actually converts the text to lowercase, uppercase and titlecase. You just have to type the keyword followed by your text in the search and press enter that’s it.

Generate QR Codes:

Generating QR Codes for anything is just so easy with the help of DuckDuckGo. You just type QR followed by the website address and typing enter will present you with the QR Code and it gives you the convenience of opening the website in your phone without having to type the address.

Find App alternatives:

Yes, DuckDuckGo offers you this feature as well. You can search for the alternatives of a particular app by just typing alternative to followed by the app name and press enter, that’s it, it will show you the result.

Isn’t this search engine looks so useful and interesting. So do try it for sure.

 

Written By: Satyapriya Buddhavarapu

Google makes it much easier to use 2FA on your account

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google-two-step-phone-login-setup-01

Google has a new way to secure your account called Google’s two-factor authentication system (2FA). Previously if you want to use this you should have a six-digit code or USB security dongle connected to the system. “Google prompt” is a new way, it will just uses a push notification at the time of sign in. After entering password, you will get a pop up notification in your mobile asking if you want to sign-in and if you press “yes” then you are in.

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To setup this in your Gmail account, then go to the “Security” section of your Google Account settings, click on “2-Step Verification”. Then you will see the new option called “Google Prompt.” To make sure your account is more secure and avoid misuse of this feature google recommends a strong pattern or pin to your lock screen. If you are using Google promt you no longer can signin with your phone, Google will automatically disable sign in with your phone.

Why you need to turn off your Webcam immediately?

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turn-off-webcam

Webcams are essential for today’s communication through desktops and laptops. But the same webcams causing privacy issues if the system got hacked or infected. We came across many incidents where hackers captured naked video footage from the systems they hacked.

How webcams hacked?

Any program such as Skype installed on the laptop can activate webcam and broadcast the captured images to the remote server. While browsing illegal, porn sites people accidently installs rogue browser extensions and software which take control every aspect of the computer. Remember that; any program can activate webcam if it has such functionality in the code written.

Disconnect or cover the Webcam

If you are using a webcam on your desktop computer, it is the best idea to unplug the webcam when not using it. People feel it discomfort to unplug and plug the webcam repeatedly whenever they want it. But the negligence can lead to webcam hacking. So never connect webcam continuously to the desktop computer.

A webcam on the laptop itself equipped onto the motherboard so that you can’t disconnect it. So it is a good idea to cover it with a small plastic tape or sticker. We can disable webcam through the Windows Device Manager or the BIOS. You can purchase webcam covers specially available to close the laptop webcam on the Amazon.