Tech Tips We Shared with You This February 2015

Starting February, we’ve been sharing quick tech tips in our Tip of the day section. If you missed out on some of our daily tips, here is a summarized version of all that we shared during the month. If you have a useful tip to share with our readers, perhaps an app that you used that you found to be highly useful in your work, do drop us a line at [email protected] so we can share it with the community.

Tech Tips We Shared This February

 

WhatsApp Tips

• You can disable the read receipts or blue ticks on Whatsapp messages by going to Settings > Account > Privacy and unchecking Read receipts.

Dropbox Tips

• If you use the Dropbox app on your phone, you will see that there’s a small star icon at the bottom of each file. Tap on this if you want to make a file available offline. Do it for important files that you might need to access anytime. And you can also enable passcode lock in Dropbox to ensure that the files stay safe from prying eyes.

Outlook Tips

• You can create a new email message in Outlook with content copied from your clipboard. Just go over to Outlook and hit the Ctrl+V button.
• You can take a note in Outlook 2013 by pressing CTrl+Shift+N, taking your note and pressing Esc.

Gmail Tips

• To Stop Gmail from Auto Adding Contacts to your Contacts List, go to Settings->General Settings and in the Create contacts for auto-complete: section, select I’ll add contacts myself.

Excel Tips

• To insert a new row above an active cell’s row in Excel, Press Alt + I (Insert), then press R (Row). To insert a column, replace the R by C.
• Fill an Excel Column with Repeating Sequence of Numbers :To fill down a column with a sequence of numbers such as 1,2,3,1,2,3,and so on Enter 1 at the top cell (A1) In A2, enter =MOD(A1,3)+1. Drag the fill handle to fill the rest of the column.

iOS & Android Tips

• A super quick way to turn off the Flashlight in an iOS 8 device is to swipe up, just about half way, on the camera button that’s in the lower-right corner of the lock screen.
• You can change the swipe options in your iOS 8 device at Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Swipe Options and set the Swipe Left and Swipe Right commands to your liking.
• To avoid shortcuts from getting added to your Android Home screen when you install new apps, open the Play Store app. Open the menu, tap Settings. section. Tap Add icon to home screen to disable it.
• To quickly capitalize letters while typing on your smartphone, hold Shift and continue typing the alphabets. Release to continue typing normally.
• To quickly type numbers on your smartphone, hold the 123 button and continue tapping the numbers. Release to continue typing normally.
• You can turn on or turn off Bluetooth, WiFi and Flashlight on your Android 5.0 device by hitting the Google Voice Search button on your Home screen and saying Turn on Bluetooth, Turn On WiFi, Turn on Flashlight or Turn off Bluetooth, Turn Off WiFi, Turn off Flashlight.

Other Tech Tips

• You can design great graphics for your web projects using the free online tool Canva.
• Worried about your data in the cloud? You can make use encrypted cloud services to secure your cloud uploads.
• Are website cookie notifications annoying you? Make use of the Cookie Notification Preventer for Firefox to block them.
• If you are listening to iPhone music via Bluetooth on your portable speakers and receive a call, first answer the call, then tap the Audio icon at the top right of the screen. This will let you pick up the call on your phone speakers instead of the portable speakers.
• To open a PDF file from where you last left it, go to Edit->Preferences. In the Documents tab, check the Restore last view settings when reopening documents.