The Computer Tutor

Some surprises are fun. Something that is NOT fun is working on a Word document for a while, then a sudden power outage shuts off your computer, and you realize you never saved that document. But there’s good news! You can probably get it back!

Actually this alarming situation might happen due to a brief loss of electricity, but sometimes it can happen just because of user error. You create this big document, then you go to close it, and in a brief lapse of focus you click on “Don’t Save”. So guess what – Word doesn’t save it. It’s just gone. Or rather, it APPEARS to be gone. There is still hope!

On this blog and on my podcast, I do complain a lot about Microsoft because of the way they do things. And it’s deserved. But in this case, Microsoft got it right. This feature has saved a lot of hours of work for MS Word users.

To show you how it works, I’ll go through the exact process of losing and recovering.

First, I’ll create a new Word document. I started it with one line: “This is my sample document” Then I just added 5000 words of Latin “filler text” that I copied and pasted from Lipsum.com (a great source if you ever need a bunch of dummy text for a document or a website).

This is a large document. Typically if a document is 5000 words, it means I’ve spent a lot of time creating it, and I definitely don’t want to do something stupid and lose it.

And speaking of stupid, even though I theoretically have spent so much time on this, I have never once clicked “Save” to save the document and give it a file name.

Now I’m going to click the X in the top right corner to exit this document and close the MS Word program. Of course I get the question, “Want to save your changes to Document1?” but I absent-mindedly click “Don’t Save”.

And of course, that’s when the panic would suddenly strike. Did I really just delete hours of work with a single click? Do I have to do it all over again?

When that happens, here’s what you do:

Click to open MS Word. Then look at your list of recent documents. At the bottom of that list, click on “Open Other Documents”.

On the next screen, you’ll see a list of your recent documents, and at the bottom of that list is a button that has inspired hope and relief in a lot of scared people. It says “Recover Unsaved Documents”:

And there it is – a new window opens, and displays my recent unsaved documents. If there are several listed there, you can identify the one you want by the date. In this case, I can also identify it by the name (Word just takes the first words in the document to create the file name):

So I select that document and click Open, and I have the file back on my screen so I can actually save it with the proper name and in the right location in the Documents folder. Disaster averted!

WARNING: Word does not save documents like this forever, so don’t wait! As soon as you realize what you’ve done, go through this process and save it the correct way so you’re sure you have it back.

I buy stuff from Amazon all the time. A lot of my purchases are things I already know about because I’ve bought them before. But sometimes I’m buying something new, comparing prices, maybe comparing different models of the same item, trying to decide which would be best to buy. It’s great that most Amazon products have lots of reviews – but should you trust them?

Here’s the short answer: no. You should not trust the reviews on Amazon. At least not without doing a bit of extra research on your own.

You might be surprised to find that there’s a whole underground economy based on Amazon sellers actually paying people to write 5-star reviews for their products (and 1-star negative reviews for their competition). To get a more thorough understanding of how it works check out this article that came out earlier this month.

Originally, Amazon actually allowed people to post “incentivized” reviews. The seller would either give someone their product for free, or sell it at a huge discount, in exchange for a review. For those reviews, the writer had to state clearly that “I was provided this product for free or at a discount, in exchange for my honest and unbiased review”. Well, of course those reviews were skewed to “positive” rather than “negative” because the reviewers obviously wanted to keep the gig going.

So a couple of years ago, Amazon stopped allowing incentivized or paid reviews. Think that stopped it from happening? No way. It’s probably bigger now than ever, but even worse – now there are no disclaimer statements in the reviews, so it’s very difficult for Amazon to stop it from happening.

There are private Facebook groups, Slack channels and Discord channels that function specifically for Amazon sellers to hire people to post fake reviews. It’s a big industry, because Amazon is so big and sells such a high volume of products.

So what do you do when you want to make a purchase?

Fortunately, even though you can’t necessarily determine the authenticity of a review just by reading it, there is some software that can essentially do that.

Fakespot (Fakespot.com) is one of the better-known services that does this. They’ve created software that analyzes trends and patterns that fake reviewers create, and present that information for shoppers to use.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say you’re shopping for a pair of oven mitts. You come across this listing on Amazon:

Good price, and they have 126 reviews, with almost all of them being 5 stars. Good deal, right?

But before you make that purchase, go up and do a right-click in the address bar (on the Amazon listing page) and choose “Copy”. Then go to Fakespot.com and right-click and Paste that address and click on “Analyze”.

And here’s what Fakespot found:

If this were an actual purchase situation, I would probably decide to NOT get that product, since it appears likely that about half of the reviews are not genuine.

Fakespot offers this service for free. They also have browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari to make it easier to check on products, but the extensions are $1.99 per month. Pretty cheap price if it saves you the hassle of buying a poor-quality product and having to return it.

Unfortunately, it’s an accident that happens way more often than it should – a liquid gets spilled on a laptop. Water, soda, wine, beer, lemonade, whatever – obviously none of these things are a good thing for a computer. But then, in some cases, the owner of the laptop makes things worse by trying to “dry out” the laptop with a hair dryer.

Makes sense, right? A hair dryer (blow dryer) is designed specifically to blow air and dry things out, so logically it would seem like it’s a good choice to quickly dry out your laptop after a spill.

Blow dryers work fine on hair, which is what they are designed for. But your hair isn’t made of plastic like your laptop keyboard is. Plastic has a lower melting point, and unfortunately some people are surprised at how quickly that can happen.

To demonstrate this, I picked out an old, non-working laptop from my collection (every tech has a few of these around). And I used a standard blow dryer, like you’d buy from your local Walmart. You probably have one in your bathroom right now.

Here’s a picture of the lower left section of the keyboard before our experiment:

Just a regular keyboard on an old computer.

Now, here’s the same laptop keyboard after 60 seconds of blow-drying:

It’s pretty surprising how quickly it can happen. Laptop keyboards are just not designed to handle hot air coming at them. And that’s after just one minute. Think about how long it would take to actually dry out the entire keyboard (IF the liquid was contained to just the keyboard and didn’t seep further down, on to the motherboard and other components).

I was going to show you some other pictures of keyboards that were inadvertently destroyed by blow dryers, but I cannot post them here on my site due to copyright concerns. But if you want to see the damage that can be done by hot air, do a Google Image search on “hair dryer keyboard damage”.

So if you do accidentally spill something on your laptop, don’t run for the blow dryers. Instead:

Yes, that means you won’t be able to use it for 2 days. Do not try to shortcut this and boot it up sooner just to see if it works!

After 48 hours and the liquid has dried, put the battery back in and reconnect the power cord and see if it turns on. If it boots up, you’re probably okay. If it doesn’t, contact your local computer tech.

And you might also check to see if you happened to have purchased an extended warranty when you bought the laptop. If you have coverage that includes accidental spills, it might be time to make a claim on that plan. Personally, I never buy those accident policies. My insurance plan is just not drinking near my laptop.

When you open Microsoft Word to create a new document, the default font that’s in place and ready to be used is Calibri. But did you know that you can change that, so that a new Word document will start off in whatever font you prefer?

This sounds like an interesting 2-part trivia question.

Question: What is the default font in MS Word 2016?

Question: What was the default font BEFORE it was Calibri?

Calibri has actually been around for a while. It was introduced as the standard Word font way back in Office 2007 (and if you’re still using Office 2007, you really need to get your life in order).  Before that, as you just read in the question above, the default was Times New Roman.

Why did Microsoft change it? Couple of reasons:

But what if you don’t like Calibri? Maybe you WANT Times New Roman on all your documents. Or you might just prefer one of the other hundreds or thousands of fonts that are widely available. If that’s the case, it’s an easy change to make.

Here’s how you change the default font in Word 2016:

1. Under the “Home” tab, click the little pop-out arrow in the Fonts section:

2. That will open a new window with lots of choices – font, size, style, etc. Just choose what you want and check it in the preview at the bottom, then click “Set as Default”.

3. You’ll get a little pop-up asking if you want to set the new font as the default for just this document, or all documents. Make that choice and click OK.

If you’re not sure if you want to change the default font for ALL future documents, you might try it out on your next few documents just to see how you like it. Of course, even if you do change the default for all documents, you can use this same procedure to change it back.

Most people get a new computer every 3-5 years. Sometimes they might go longer than that, but that’s probably about the average. But I see a lot of people that have a stack of old laptops sitting in their office or their garage, just because they don’t know exactly how to get rid of them.

What do you do with an old laptop? You have a few options.

If it still works:

If it does not work:

Whatever you end up deciding, here’s the most important thing to consider: get your data OFF the laptop before you get rid of it. If you used this laptop for any length of time, it probably has some documents, pictures, PDF files (such as tax returns), videos, and maybe some old emails. Stuff you would not want some random person to find. Once the computer is out of your hands, you really don’t know where it will go or who will go “exploring” the hard drive for data. Make sure there’s nothing on there for anyone to find.

And keep in mind that simply doing a quick format of the drive does NOT delete your data. Anyone that’s just a little bit tech savvy can use software to make that “formatted” data readable again. So if you’re not sure how to REALLY delete your files, take it to someone who does.

Did you know you can create a document in Microsoft Word and send it from Outlook as an attachment, and you never even need to click to open Outlook? It’s true, and it’s pretty easy.

And why would you want to do this? The main reason is simple: fewer clicks. This makes it faster and easier than the traditional way of attaching a file to an email. Normally, you would create the email in Outlook, then tell Outlook you want to attach a file, then navigate to that file and choose it. None of that is necessary, since you’ll be doing the entire thing without even directly opening Outlook.

The other reason is that it prevents you from attaching the wrong document to the email. In some cases it can be a bit embarrassing to send an email with an attachment and then find out that you sent the wrong file. Or the situation that happens to all of us at some point – you sent an email that says the file is attached, but you end up forgetting to attach it completely. I’ve definitely done that more than once.

This process eliminates all those errors. That’s because you do everything inside MS Word, right in the very document you want to attach.

Here’s how you do this in Word 2016:

1. Open MS Word and create a document, and save it. The document should still be open there on your screen after you have saved it. For this example we’ll call the document “Resume of Chef Artie Bucco.docx”.

2. Click on File – Share

3. A new little window will open up. At the bottom, you have the option of attaching that file as a Word document, or as a PDF file:

If you click on Word document, here’s what happens immediately. A new MS Outlook email opens. The subject line for this new email is the name of the document (you can change it if you want). And your Word document is already attached.

So all you have to do is enter the email address of the recipient, type whatever you want to go in the actual message of the email, and send it. Super easy. And if you are actually sending a resume, it does look more professional to send it as a PDF file. That’s as easy as clicking to share as a PDF instead:

And incidentally, you can use this same process to attach other MS Office files to an Outlook email – Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, etc.

A while back I came across this great free software that will go out on the web and grab a bunch of really cool photographs, and use them to create a new Windows wallpaper for your computer which continuously changes as often as you wish. It’s pretty cool!

The program is called John’s Background Switcher. Guess who created it. That’s right, it was John! You can get it free here: https://johnsad.ventures/software/backgroundswitcher/.

Getting the program installed is easy – just go to the link I mentioned above, and click on the download link based on what kind of computer you are using (Windows or Mac). We’ll be talking about the Windows version but I assume the program works similarly on a Mac.

The download and installation process are pretty straightforward and just a matter of clicking Next a couple of times, then Install. When I installed it, there was no attempt by the software to sneak anything in that was unwanted, so hopefully that will continue.

After it’s installed and running, just a little bit of setup is needed. The setup window might open automatically, but if it doesn’t, look for the little icon down in the lower right corner:

Do a right click on that little icon and choose “Settings”:

That will open up the program and allow you to choose some options.

First, the big thing is where the program will find the photos to put on your computer. There are lots of sources of free pictures online, and John’s Background Switcher knows all of them! If you click the “Add” button at the top right, you’ll see what the optional sources are.

You can choose any of those photo websites, or even have it grab pictures from your own hard drive. For me, I keep it simple – I choose Flickr, and then in the main window I check the box “Top 250 photos from the last 7 days”. You’re pretty much guaranteed to never see the same image twice that way.

You’ll some other options on that screen as well. You can choose how often a picture changes – as often as every 10 seconds, or just once a week. You also have the option of how big the picture should be on your screen. That’s something you probably just want to play with and see what you prefer.

For me, I use it a little differently. If you right click on the icon in the bottom right corner of your screen, you’ll see that the first option in that menu is “Next background”. I like clicking that and just viewing a few of them until I get to one that really strikes me, then I actually pause the program so that it just stays on that picture until I change it. I keep it on a background for a day or a few days maybe, then I go back in and click through until I find another one I like, and keep it on that one for a few days.

I’ve been using this program on my own computer for several months now, without any negative stuff like malware or ads coming in with it. Looks like a good one. If you try it, leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Today we’re talking about how to remove saved passwords from your web browser.

You shouldn’t have Chrome or Firefox store passwords for you. It’s not safe. If anyone ever got access to your computer, they would see a full list of all your accounts and passwords – definitely not good! Use LastPass instead. But sometimes you might get a popup asking if you want the browser to save the password and you might just click “Save” without thinking, to get the window out of the way.

So you might have some (or many) passwords saved in Chrome or Firefox. Here’s how to get them out of there.

Removing saved passwords in Chrome:

1. Click the 3 dots in the top right, then in the dropdown menu click on Settings

2. Scroll down and click on Advanced

3. Scroll down to the “Passwords and Forms” section and click on “Manage Passwords”

4. Make sure both toggle switches are in the “Off” position. Then look a little further down, and you’ll see a list of saved passwords. Delete all of them.

When you’re done, it should look like this (because there are no saved passwords listed):

Removing saved passwords in Firefox:

1. Click the 3 horizontal lines in the top right, then in the dropdown menu click on Options

2. Click the Privacy and Security link on the left side

3. Under the “Forms and Passwords” section, make sure “Remember logins and passwords for websites is UNchecked, then click on “Saved Logins”

4. You’ll see a list of whatever passwords are saved – delete each one

When you’re done, it should look like this:

It’s important to get these lists cleared of all your passwords. If your computer gets compromised, those lists of user names and passwords in your web browser is one of the first places the bad guys (or their automated software) will look and copy. It only takes a few seconds, and then they have access to all of those accounts. Don’t risk it.

It’s great to be able to speak into your device, such as the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot to get some information. But did you know, every one of those voice commands is stored by Amazon? You might find it handy to know how to delete that history.

How to VIEW your Alexa recordings:

It’s easiest to do this on your computer. Go to the website alexa.amazon.com and over on the left side, click on Settings:

Then over on the right side, scroll down to the “Alexa account” section and click on History:

Now you’ll see a full list of everything you’ve said to Alexa. You’ll probably see some common trends. My Alexa search list is pretty boring – mostly it’s “Play Neil Young on Pandora”. Alexa does a whole lot more than that.

Click on any of the recordings in the list and it will take you to that specific recording. Also on that page is an option to “Delete voice recordings”. You can do this here, but only one at a time. This really is not a viable option for most people, since you probably have hundreds or thousands of voice recordings. But it is kind of interesting to see the list here.

How to DELETE your Alexa recordings:

To delete all of the recordings at once, you would do that from the Amazon site.

You just go to the Amazon “Manage your Content and Devices” page, here: amazon.com/mycd and click on the “Your Devices” tab:

Then you find your device in the list and click on the left-side icon with the 3 dots in it. This will show you your device, and you want to click on “Manage voice recordings”:

Now you’ll get a little alert window that comes up before you can actually delete your voice recordings. The alert will tell you that Amazon uses your past history of talking to Alexa to allow her to “learn” your voice and improve the accuracy of the results. This means your future results “might” not be as accurate without that history of learning that has been built up. This all might be true, but it’s up to you if it makes any difference or not.

Once you click on Delete, a new message appears to let you know the delete request has been received:

The actual full deletion will probably not be immediate. It might take less than a minute if you have just a few voice recordings, or it might take several minutes (or possibly longer) if you’ve recorded a lot of commands. But there’s nothing else you need to do from this point.

As a side note, Amazon’s Echo and Dot are not the only devices that store these recordings. Your voice commands are also stored by Google each time you say “OK Google” and give a command, as well as when you give commands to Siri (Apple devices) and Cortana (Windows 10 devices). But those processes are different so I might cover some or all of them in a different post.

Sometimes when I’m browsing the web, I get annoyed and confused. Annoyed at websites that automatically start playing sound, and confused as to why the creator of that site thought it was a good idea.

I mean seriously – websites auto-playing sound became a trend maybe 15 years ago, but users made it very clear that the practice was not acceptable. Any course, class or seminar on website development will make it clear, you don’t start playing audio automatically when someone visits your website. So, for a long time, professional websites didn’t do it.

But now it’s back! And even the major online sites are joining in. As an example, take a look at this news story from CNN. You might want to visit that link just to READ the story like a civilized person. But no. As soon as the page loads, there’s the reporter in your face with a full-sound video, TELLING you the story.

And now there’s a new thing. What, you’re going to scroll down the page so you don’t have to watch the video? Here, we’ll make it smaller and stick it in the corner, and make it stay visible on the screen, even as you try to scroll away from it. YOU VILL VATCH ZE VIDEO!

And these are major websites doing this. The example is from CNN, but Fox News does the exact same thing, along with lots of other websites.

So it’s an ongoing fight between what the websites want to make us see and hear, and what we the visitors want to NOT see and hear. We’ve already won that battle in terms of display advertisements – the uBlock Origin ad blocker extension for Chrome has given us the freedom and added security of not having to look at ads.

And now Chrome has been updated to give us the added pleasure of being able to say SHUT UP to websites that auto-play music or any other type of audio.

A while back they gave us the little “speaker” icon – so if you happen to have a bunch of tabs open and one of them is a website that suddenly starts to play audio, you can quickly see which tab it is just by looking for the speaker icon:

And now you can actually mute the sound being generated by a website – just do a right click on the tab, and in the drop-down menu, choose “Mute site”:

And it’s not just the sound for that particular web page, or that particular news article on the site – it means all of the sound on that entire website.

And the nice thing is, Chrome remembers that selection. So you can close the tab and open that site in a different tab, or you could even close Chrome completely and then run it again and go back to that website – and that site will still be muted. So you don’t have to click “Mute site” every time you go there.

(Also, I just checked on Firefox and you can do the same thing – the menu item is called “Mute tab”. Should work the same way.)

And it’s actually kind of gratifying – if you are on the site and there’s some idiot news reporter blathering on and on, and you click to mute the site, the video part just keeps playing. So you’ll SEE the person speaking, you just won’t hear any of the sound. On the rare occasion that I might watch something on TV, that’s exactly the same effect as when I hit the “Mute” button every time a commercial comes on. Wonderful, blessed silence…