The Computer Tutor

You probably have a ton of fonts stored in your computer. Probably more than you’ll ever use. I know I do. Wouldn’t it be easy to choose a font if you could see all of them together? Here’s how to do that.

This is a free little program that runs on Windows, Mac or Linux. It’s called Print My Fonts, and you can download it here. It will download in a .zip folder, so you’ll need to open that folder and drag the file to your desktop and run it. The nice thing is, it does not need to install anything, and it doesn’t put any extra junk on your computer (at least not when I ran it).

When you double click the program to run it, you’ll see this window:

Lots of things on this page. But really, just a couple of settings you’ll probably want to take notice of.

About halfway down, it says “Which text should be written?” That’s where you can change the words “Example Text” to anything you want to type in there. This is where you’d normally enter “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs” since that sentence uses every letter in the English alphabet.

The other items is the section at the bottom – you can choose to print your sentence to paper, save it as an image on your computer, export it to a Word document or whatever you prefer.

And here’s a great bonus – the computer that created this great little free program has lots of other programs that are pretty useful. When you have PrintMyFonts open, go up to the top and click on “Software” – and you’ll see the other applications that you might be interested in:

If you try out any of those other programs, I’d love to hear what you think of it!

Windows 10 is just LOADED with some really great shortcuts, and a lot of people don’t know about many of them. I’m sure I don’t know about all of them. But here are ten shortcuts that I (and others) have found really handy.

Shortcut #1

Shortcut #2

Shortcut #3

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Shortcut #7

Shortcut #8

Shortcut #9

Shortcut #10

Virtual desktops are handy if you want to have a bunch of research windows open on one desktop, and the paper you’re writing on the other desktop. Or if you want to let someone else use your computer temporarily without having all of your windows available to be seen.

And a BONUS Shortcut:

Have you seen clickable links that show the address as bit.ly followed by some random letters or numbers? Bitly is a legitimate link-shortening service, but you shouldn’t just click on one of them unless you know for sure where it will take you. Here’s how to check it ahead of time.

If you’re not familiar with Bitly, what it does is pretty simple.

Let’s say you want to send someone a link to an article, but the link is one of those URLs that are just ridiculously long, like this:

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/02/04/suicides-among-active-duty-soldiers-are-up-about-20-percent/?fbclid=IwAR1eac6l6GYuxevGX4TyQeyhv0Xg4EpvJHoKCYLObsrPcuE7oSGLPfTt8J4#.XFufds06avg.facebook

What you can do is go to Bit.ly and paste in that super-long link, and it comes back with this:

https://bit.ly/2MWEvOG

Both of those links go to the same place, but obviously the shorter one is much easier to deal with.

The problem with the short link, however, is that if you didn’t create it, you don’t really know where it will take you. All you see is the “bit.ly”, so the actual ultimate address is a mystery until you get there. And you know, of course, that you should never click on a link unless you KNOW ahead of time where it will take you. Clicking on blind links is very dangerous. Don’t do it.

But there is a safe way to click on a Bitly link: all you have to do is add a “+” to the end of it (a “plus” sign).

So if you saw the link above – https://bit.ly/2MWEvOG – you wouldn’t just click on it and hope for the best. You would highlight it, then copy and paste it into your web browser’s address bar, and add that “+” to the end. So this is the address you would actually be going to:

https://bit.ly/2MWEvOG+

When you go to that revised address, you’ll be taken to a preview the Bitly website, where it will show you the ACTUAL link that you’ll be forwarded to, so that you can decide if it’s a legitimate website page you want to visit. In this case, since the final destination is a news article, Bitly also shows you the title for the article:

I do this “Bitly preview” for every shortened link I’m asked to click on, regardless of who sent it to me or where someone says it’s “supposed” to go. The preview only takes a second and can save you lots of headaches!

Do you know about the Timeline feature in Windows 10? Most people don’t. Here’s what it is and the steps to disable it, if you want to.

You can think of Timeline as being kind of similar to your internet browser history. You know, in Chrome or Firefox (or any browser) you can go back and see all the websites you’ve visited over the last hour, the last day or however long you go back. Unless you have cleared that history at some point.

Windows 10 Timeline is kind of like that, but it includes the other activities on your computer (not just the web browser history). So it will show the websites visited, and the apps you used.

Here’s how you can see this in Windows 10:

Look for the Windows key on your keyboard. It’s in the lower left area and has the Windows logo on it. Hold down the Windows key and tap the “Tab” key.

Now you’re looking at Timeline. Each item is a “mini window” of various activities. You’ll see the first row are activities that you have currently running – maybe different web browser tabs, your email, or other programs that are running.

Below your currently running items are the things you were doing earlier – like earlier today, or yesterday, or a few days ago. You can just scroll down and see all of them. So if you used Skype 3 days ago, you’ll see it there and you can click on it and be back in Skype.

For some people, this is a very handy thing – you can easily find what you were doing on a previous day, and get back to it quickly without having to do a lot of searching.

For other people, it’s Windows keeping track of what you do on your computer.

For me, I’ve been kind of on the fence about it. But now I’m kind of leaning toward disabling it, since I don’t really use it personally. I have already turned it off on my own computer, and will be disabling it for future new PCs that I set up as part of that overall process.

How to disable Windows 10 Timeline and clear the history:

Click the Start button, then click the Settings icon:

In Windows Settings, click on Privacy:

In the Privacy section, click on the left side where it says “Activity history”:

Now you’ll see the Activity History page. This is where you configure Timeline to work or not work. To turn it off, you want to uncheck the top two boxes, then turn off the connection to your Microsoft account, and click the “Clear” button if you want to wipe out what activities have already been recorded and stored:

And of course if you decide you want to use it again, just go back in the same settings and check those boxes again.

Many times on my blog and podcast I’ve encouraged everyone to make sure they have a backup of anything important on their computer. For most people, the big reason for having a backup is to make sure you don’t lose anything important, like documents and pictures, if your hard drive fails. But there’s another really important reason!

Of course you don’t want to lose all your important pictures, and your Outlook emails, and your whole Documents folder, and your music collection or anything else.

It’s a sick feeling when you DO lose all of that, and it’s also an amazing feeling when your drive crashes but you know that you WON’T lose anything – and I can tell you I’ve experienced both of those situations personally.

But sometimes I come across a client who says this:

I don’t really save anything on my computer that’s actually critical. I do depend on my laptop because I use it every day for work, and it has programs on it that I use all the time, but I don’t save things like pictures or documents on there. Do I really need to do a backup?

And the answer to that is a definite YES. You still need a backup.

To understand why you still need to do a backup, let’s look at it kind of in reverse.

Let’s say you don’t have anything important stored on your computer, but your hard drive fails so the computer won’t boot up.

If you DON’T have a local backup, here’s what you have to do:

In other words, it’s like starting with a new, blank computer. Doing all of this can take hours (I know, because I do all of these things and more, each time I set up a new computer).

If you DO have a local backup, here’s what you have to do:

And with that, everything is back to the way it was – your software, your files, your desktop icons, EVERYTHING. It’s as if nothing happened. And that means your computer is back up and usable within an hour or two.

So even if you don’t store any important pictures or documents on your computer, the question is – when your computer goes down and needs a new hard drive, how fast do you want it to be back up so you can use it again? A local backup is what enables that. And by “local” I mean a full system image backup to a portable USB drive that sits next to your computer. Once the software is set up, all you have to do is plug in that drive at night and unplug it in the morning.

And I have to put out this warning: when you buy a portable drive, it will come with it’s own backup software. I don’t recommend using that software. The software I use is Macrium Reflect, and it’s free for personal use, and I’m very familiar with how it works. I can set it up for you remotely, so you don’t even have to bring your computer anywhere.

Today we’re talking about a scam that’s making the rounds but a lot of people aren’t aware of how it works, or even the fact that it IS a scam. But it can cause you some headaches if you fall for it.

We’ve all become pretty accustomed to verification codes. If a company or website needs to verify your identity, they will commonly send a text message with a 6-digit verification code, which you then need to enter on the website to prove that you are the person you say you are. (Really, it just proves that you have access to that person’s phone, but usually that’s good enough).

But now, the scammers are using the verification code process for their own nefarious purposes. Specifically, they want to create new online accounts, such as a Craigslist account, using YOUR phone number.

When a scammer does this, there are basically two main steps to the process.

Step One – start creating the Craigslist account

The scammer will go in to the Craigslist site and start the process of creating a new account. Of course, he only wants to use this account to scam people. Craigslist knows that this is very common, so they require any new account to have a phone number, and they have to VERIFY that phone number.

So the scammer gets most of the way in to the process of creating the new account, right up to where Craigslist is asking for the phone number. That’s where they pause for a minute.

Step Two – hijacking your phone number

The most common victim for this scam is someone who is selling something on Craigslist, and includes their phone number in the contact info.

The scammer sends you a text message saying, “Hey I want to buy your ____ ” (whatever you’re selling).

You respond, but then he comes back and says “There’s a lot of scammers on Craigslist these days. I’d like to verify you first. I just sent a code on your phone. Reply to this text and tell me the code, to prove you’re a real person!”

But of course, the code that got sent didn’t really come from him. It came from Craigslist, because he used YOUR phone number to verify his new account. When you send him the code, he enters it on his Craigslist application and this “confirms” to Craigslist that he owns that phone number. Even though he doesn’t own it – you own it.

At this point, your phone number is associated with the scammer’s new account. This means that he can now post ads on Craigslist for the next 90 days without any further verification. Any spam or illegal activities done on that account will be connected to your phone number. And that also means if you try to register for your OWN account on Craigslist, you probably won’t be able to do so, since your phone number has a bad history.

This process can also be used with Google, and that means the scammer can use your phone number to get their own Google Voice number, so they can make phone calls and send text messages to scam other people.

In the worst cases, illegal activity done on these fake/scam accounts might involve law enforcement investigating who is responsible. Don’t put yourself in the position of having to explain why your phone number is the “verified” number on a scammer’s account.

Bottom line: don’t give any verification code to anyone.

What if I told you that five minutes from now you could have your own website? It’s true. If you have a Google account (a Gmail email account is a Google account), creating and publishing your own website is as easy as creating a Word document.

Want to see what’s possible with Google Sites? Here’s a collection of websites that were created with the service:  https://sites.google.com/site/gsitesgallery/ You’ll see lots of thumbnail images for websites – just click on each one to view the site itself.

For this example, I’ll make a website about my two little Yorkie dogs, Lilly and Fenway.

The first thing you’ll need to do is go to the Google Sites website: site.new. If you haven’t already signed in to your Google account, it will ask you to sign in (or create an account if you don’t already have one). The opening page looks like this:

When you click on “Header type” you’ll see you have four options:

You can click on each of them to get an idea of what each one means. For this example, I’ll choose “Large banner” (you can change it later if you want).

And when you click in the “Your page title” area, you can type the title of this web page. You can also click on “Change image”, and upload a picture from your computer as a background image. And “Enter site name” is where you would put the overall name of the website. So here’s our site so far:

Over on the right side, you see 3 tabs:

So I went to Themes and chose the “Aristotle” option.

Then I went back to Insert, and chose to insert a text box. This gives you a place to type whatever written content you want to put on this page. I typed a couple of sentences, which now appear under the main header image (you can type as much text as you want):

Now I’ll go back to Insert, and choose to insert a picture. You can upload an image from your hard drive, or you can choose from your albums on Google Photos.

Then, I’ll write a little about that picture and drag that text to be right next to the image.

So you can see, just about anything you would want to add to your web page is available in that tool section on the right side. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see lots more options:

The best way to get a feel for these things is to just click on each one and see what it does. You can create a button that links to some other website. You can put in a divider line to separate groups of content. You can embed a YouTube video. You can put in a form, where you can ask questions and people can fill out the form and submit it to you. You can insert documents, spreadsheets, all kinds of stuff.

At the top of the page you also have some other controls. In the middle is an icon of an eyeball.

You can click the eyeball to get a preview of your site at any point. So you can try adding something, preview it, then go back to editing until you get it exactly how you want it to look.

And when you’re done, click the big “Publish” button to take your site live for the world to see.

That will give you some options. The primary one is to determine the actual address (URL) for your site. Since I typed lillyandfenway that means the address for my site is:

https://sites.google.com/view/lillyandfenway (that link takes you to the actual site I created)

You could also get a domain name so that it looks more personal or professional. Such as, “lillyandfenway.com” or something similar, depending on what domain names are available. That just makes it easier to tell people the website and have them remember it.

You can also set a limit on who can view the website. In most cases “Anyone” is fine since that makes it public for anyone to be able to see it.

So there you have it – creating your own website with Google Sites.

Keep this in mind: a website that looks really great and has lots of content and features means that whoever created that site put in the time and effort to make it that way. Google Sites just gives you the technology and the tools to create a great website. It’s kind of like writing. If you have a computer and Microsoft Word, you have the opportunity to write a NY Times best-selling book. But most of that depends on you, not your computer.

One way PC problems can sometimes be fixed is by using the built-in function called System Restore. It’s not the answer for every situation, but in certain situations it can be the perfect solution. But in order for it to work, it has to be set up correctly ahead of time.

Here’s what happens. A client will bring me a computer and maybe some malware has wormed its way in or some unwanted software has gotten installed, something like that. The client knows that the problem happened within the last 24 hours. So in this case, we can probably use System Restore to take the computer back to an earlier date – meaning longer than 24 hours ago – and the problem is likely to go away.

But with System Restore, there are a couple of things that are needed in order for that to work.

First, System Restore has to be enabled and configured properly.

Second, you will need what’s called a “restore point” – which just means a date that the computer can be brought back to. For example, usually when Microsoft sends out a Windows Update, the first step in that process is that the update will first create a restore point – so that if there’s a problem with the update, System Restore can be used to take the computer back to that point (before the troublesome update).

So what happens sometimes is I’ll go to use System Restore, and the message that comes back is “No restore points found”. When there are no restore points, System Restore is useless.

So here are the two things you need to do in order to make sure System Restore is ready to use when you need it:

First, enable and configure System Restore:

Click in the search field in the bottom left and type: Create a restore point.  Then, in the search results, click on “Create a restore point”. This will open the System Restore window.

In that window, click once to highlight the C drive, and click on “Configure”.

In the next window, there are two things you need to do:

Second, set a restore point:

After you click ok in the last step, you’re taken back to the main window. At the bottom of that window is a button named “Create”. Click that, and then give this system restore point a name. It can be as simple as today’s date.

Finally, click OK and you’re done.

It’s not a bad idea to just create a new restore point every once in a while, as long as your computer seems to be working well. Windows is supposed to set one automatically each time new Windows Updates come in, but that is not something I would rely on.

Some things you should know about System Restore:

I’m kind of picky about where I keep the icons on my desktop screen. Not all of them, but a few that I click on regularly. I have a couple of spreadsheets I use all the time, and a link to run Evernote, and a link to my Google contacts. I keep these icons in a certain place so I know where to find them. But then something happens, and they’re not where they’re supposed to be.

What causes this?

If you ever play around with your display resolution, that will move your icons to different places. I have heard that certain games require a particular resolution, so some people have to change the resolution to play the game, then change it back again.

But for me, it seems that the most common reason for icons getting moved around is because of Windows Updates. At least that’s what appears to be the culprit, since I notice the rearrangement right after Patch Tuesday (the second Tuesday of each month, when Microsoft sends out the monthly updates). After the overnight updates, I turn on the screen and all of my icons are arranged in solid columns on the left side of my left monitor. So I have to drag some of them back to their “right” place.

But a while ago, I discovered a little program that solves that problem. It’s called ReIcon.

The idea behind this program is pretty simple. You tell it how you want your icons to be displayed on your screen, and it remembers that layout. If something changes the layout, you just tell it to go back to the layout you want.

The program is free. You can get it by going to the developer’s website page here:

That page describes what it does, the benefits of using it, and how to use it. At the bottom of the page you’ll see a link to download. When you click that, it will take you to a page that automatically downloads a zipped folder to your computer. When you open that zipped folder, you’ll see a folder called ReIcon in there – just drag that to your desktop screen and keep it there.

When you open that ReIcon folder, double click on the file called ReIcon_x64.

That opens the program window. Now click on File – Save Icon Layout:

You’ve now saved the current layout of your desktop icons. That’s the new entry you see in the program window:

Want to test it? Drag some random desktop icon to some other place on your screen. Then, in the ReIcon program window, click on File – Restore Icon Layout. That icon you moved goes right back where it was supposed to be!

When you look at the website for the program (above), you’ll see in the description that it does offer a number of other configuration options. For example, on my computer, I added the “restore icon layout” to my right click menu. So whenever I want to restore the icons back to their correct arrangement, all I have to do is right-click on the desktop screen and choose “Restore Icon Layout”. Makes things quick and easy after a Windows Update has messed up the order.

I do like this program because:

If you want to use this program but find it to be a little too confusing, contact me and I can help you set it up through my Remote Support service.

A lot of people use Google’s cloud services to create documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations and forms. Recently, Google introduced a new way to create this things very quickly. And once you set it up, you can literally do it with a single click.

Quick summary if you’re not familiar with Google Cloud – 

If you use Microsoft Word, you know you can create a new Word document and save it on your computer’s hard drive.

With Google Cloud, you can create a new document right there on your screen using your Google account. It will look just like a Word document. You can edit it, save it, print it, or send it to someone.

But a Google Cloud document has a couple of key differences:

So you can do these things with Google:

Up until recently, in order to create any of the above items, you had to log in to your Google account, go to Google Drive, figure out what you wanted to create, click on My Drive, then go down to Google Docs, and click on Blank Document. Multiple steps.

Now it’s much easier!

You’re probably already signed in to your Google account. So just open Chrome and up in the address bar, type: docs.new

And immediately on your screen you are presented with a brand new blank Google document, ready for you to enter your content.

Pretty cool, right?

Now we can take it a step further to make it even EASIER. When that blank document comes up on your screen, take the URL (the address in the address bar at the top) and drag that to your Bookmarks bar. Now you have a bookmark link right there on Chrome, named “Untitled Document”. So whenever you want to create a new document, all it takes is a SINGLE CLICK on that link, and you have your new blank document ready and waiting for you to start working on it.

And that’s just to create a new text document.

To create a new spreadsheet: go to sheet.new

To create a new slideshow: go to slide.new

To create a new website: go to site.new

To create a new online form: go to form.new