Exciting tips

Snapchat bought Bitmoji back in 2016 and it continues to rely on that investment. Snapchat is actively using Bitmoji to make itself more social, and to get users to interact with it more. Lenses is one of Snapchat’s stand-out features and they’ve proven time and time again to help boost its popularity. The dancing hot dog emoji that ruled the summer of 2017 is an obvious example. Snapchat has now introduced Friendmoji. It’s Bitmoji but with friends. If you use lenses on Snapchat, you know you can add your own animated Bitmoji avatar to a snap. The animations that change daily are pretty neat. Friendmoji in Snapchat lets you add a Bitmoji that features one of your Snapchat friends.

Friendmoji In Snapchat

Open Snapchat and tap the chat icon at the bottom left. This will take you to your friends list. If you have a conversation thread with the friend you want to use Friendmoji with, tap it. Otherwise, use the new message or search feature to find your friend. Your friend must have their own Snapchat account linked to their Bitmoji account for this to work. If your friend has a Bitmoji avatar then it means they do have Bitmoji connected to their Snapchat account.

On the Chat screen, tap the camera/capture button to switch to the camera view finder. Here, tap on your screen to load lenses. You will need to swipe through the different lenses to find the one that will add the Friendmoji to your snap. In the screenshot below, you can see what the icon for the lens looks like. It’s purple and shows two avatars that will most likely be depicting the current day’s Bitmoji animation. Tap it and wait for it to load. For some reason, this lens took several attempts to load with the request timing out at least four times.

Once the lens appears, you can tap the capture button and send the snap to your friend. You also have the option to move the Friendmoji around, and to resize them like you can with a regular Bitmoji. Like the regular Bitmoji animations, you will get a new one everyday.

Your friend can likewise add the same Friendmoji to a snap. A Friendmoji can feature only two people in it which is why you cannot use it from the main Snapchat screen. You will need to switch to your Friends list and select someone in order to use Friendmoji in Snapchat.

Companies that offer licensed software have started to adopt a subscription based model for their apps. This is done to counter software counterfeiting. Adobe no longer lets you buy a license for its apps. Instead, you need to buy a monthly or yearly subscription. Likewise, Microsoft also offers a subscription based purchasing model for Office 365. You can still buy an Office 2016 product key but Microsoft doesn’t advertise it much. In fact, Windows 10 even pushes you to buy an Office 365 subscription. This has lead to users thinking they can no longer get an Office 20116 product key from Microsoft and they turn to third-party sellers to get it. The only problem is that not all of them are selling you an authentic key.

If you suspect your Office 2016 product key isn’t authentic, Microsoft offers a way to check it.

Check Office 2016 Product Key

Visit this page, and sign in with your Microsoft account. This can be any Microsoft account. It doesn’t matter if you have it tied to an Office 365 subscription or to a Windows 10 account. Neither is needed. Any Microsoft account will do.

This page essentially lets you download Office 2016’s setup files but before it does, it asks you to enter the product key. If your product key is valid, you will be given a link to download the setup files.

If the product key isn’t valid, you’ll get an error like the one shown below;

If you bought a key for a different version of Office, i.e. Office 2010, or Office 2007, or Office for Mac, it redirects you to this page where you can verify your product key, and download the right version of Office.

Microsoft doesn’t tell you that the key isn’t real but if it can’t find the key in its database it’s safe to say you’ve been sold a counterfeit. If you bought the key from a well-known retailer, you might be able to return it and it’s probably an honest mistake. If you bought the key from a random seller on Craigslist or Amazon or eBay, your refund options are almost non-existent.

The only way to avoid being duped is to buy a key directly from Microsoft. It might take a little digging around but you can still buy Office 2016 and skip the subscription based model of Office 365. If for some reason, you’re unable to purchase directly from Microsoft, try and buy Office from a reliable vendor. Also, if you’re getting the product at a ridiculously low price, it’s safe to assume that you’re being scammed.

Outlook lets you create rules for the emails you send and receive. Rules are a great automation feature that help you control and sort your email. Another equally impressive but less talked about feature in Outlook is Quick Steps. It’s an automation feature that automates actions like moving emails or copying them. Using Quick Steps, you can move all new emails to a specific folder in one click. This will move them out of your inbox and into their own dedicated ‘Today’ folder. It takes very little to set up and you can run the quick step multiple times a day. Here’s what you need to do.

By default, Outlook sorts emails into dated sections i.e. ‘Today’, ‘Yesterday’, and ‘Last week’. It’s very easy for you to accidentally move to an email that was received ‘Yesterday’ while cycling through emails you received ‘Today’. This is because the ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’ sections aren’t different locations. They are just relative time sections in your inbox. We will use these sections to move all new emails to a folder.

Open Outlook. On the Home tab, click ‘Create New’ in the ‘Quick Steps’ toolbox.

A new window will open for configuring a new Quick Step. Give the Quick Step a name. If you don’t give it a name, it will inherit the name from the action you set for it.

Open the Actions dropdown and select ‘Move to folder’ from the listed options. Outlook will ask you to select a folder or create a new one. Create a new folder called ‘Today’. Under the ‘Optional’ section on this same window, set a keyboard shortcut to trigger the Quick Step. Click ‘Finish’ and you’re all done.

Return to Outlook and collapse the ‘Today’ section. Select it so that it has a light blue highlight. When you select the ‘Today’ section in its collapsed state, you also select all emails in it.

Click the Quick Step you just created in the Quick Steps toolbox, or tap the keyboard shortcut you set for it.

All emails you received today will be moved to the folder you created/set under the Quick Step. When you cycle through these emails, you will not accidentally end up browsing older emails.

You can create another Quick Step that deletes all emails from the ‘Today’ folder you just created. This will ensure the folder is empty and ready for the next batch of emails at the end of the day. You can use a set of Quick Steps to make sure you move all emails you received today to the new folder. You can run the quick step multiple times a day and sort new emails as they arrive.

This tip is useless if you fail to purge the ‘Today’ folder at the end of each day. You will just end up with another folder full of emails.

When you share something on social media, particularly on social media sites like Facebook, you may not be sharing it with your entire friends’ list or all your followers. Facebook lets you selectively share posts and Instagram has just gotten a new close friends feature that lets you create a group of people to quickly share your Instagram story with. Here’s how you can create a close friends list on Instagram.

Close friends list on Instagram

Open Instagram and go to your profile tab. Tap the hamburger icon at the top right and from the navigation drawer that opens, tap Close Friends. Search for the friends you want to add to the list and when you’ve selected all the ones you want to add, tap Done.

The Close friends list lets you control the audience for your Instagram story. When you’re about to share something to your story, you can quickly tap the Close Friends option at the bottom left and share it with only the people in your close friends list.

When you share a post with just your close friends, they will see the ‘Close friends’ label on their side as well. This should, technically, discourage them from screenshoting and sharing the post elsewhere however, if your post does end up being shared with the wrong person the Close Friends label ought to help narrow who might have done it.

Close friends is a great feature and Instagram should allow users to create more than just one quick sharing group. It goes without saying that users tend to segregate who they share certain posts with. Some posts are meant for everyone, some for a few close friends, and some only for family, while others are meant for everyone except the family. Instagam can replicate the feature from Facebook, or it can simplify it to suit the app’s sharing method better.

This feature is available on both iOS and Android however, it does not seem to have rolled out to all users. The roll out appears to be user specific and not regionally restricted. We haven’t been able to figure out a way to force the feature so if you don’t see it yet, you’re going to have to wait until the roll out is complete. Make sure you keep the Instagram app up to date. The change log for the app may state that it will add the new feature however it won’t appear in the app unless Instagram decides to enable it for your profile.

Apps and the devices they run on can be hard to put down. There is enough new content on social media apps every hour of the day that you may never run out of new things to read or watch. If nothing else, you can always get into a good Twitter argument. It’s precisely why Apple is adding Screen Time to iPhones in iOS 12. It’s a new feature that allows you to restrict how much time you spend on certain types of apps. Of course, it’s not just iOS users that need the restraint and other apps are adding their own time restricting features. YouTube has added a new Time Watched feature that reminds you to take a break.

Time Watched On YouTube

Time Watched is available on both iOS and Android. Make sure you’re running the latest version of the YouTube app. The feature is (as of yet) not available on the web version of YouTube.

Open the YouTube app and tap your profile icon at the top right. On the Account screen, there ought to be a ‘Time watched’ option.

Tap the Time Watched option and you will get a summary of how much time you’ve spent watching YouTube videos.

The summary gives you stats for the present day, yesterday, the past week, and your average time spent on the app. By default, there is no limit set on how much you can use the app. You can set it by enabling the ‘Remind me to take a break’ option. This will open the Reminder frequency menu where you can set how often you need to be reminded to close the app and do something else.

YouTube’s Time Watched feature isn’t like Screen Time. It won’t lock you out of the YouTube app if you’ve been watching videos for too long. Instead, the app will tell you at regular intervals of your own choosing to take a break. Other than that, the app tells you how much time you’re spending on it which is a passive way of shaming you into using it a little less.

It’s a shame that the feature hasn’t been extended to the website. The YouTube app isn’t exactly easy on a device’s battery. It plays video so it will drain a device’s battery quickly which means people are more likely to watch YouTube on a desktop with a more reliable power supply. The feature really ought to be extended to the website. You cannot uses Time Watched if you aren’t signed in to your Google account.

Netflix content isn’t normally the kind you’d find on HBO or AMC. The streaming service may eventually add hit shows from major networks but it still has unique content that you won’t find elsewhere. In fact, Netflix has finally gotten its first Oscar nomination for best picture this year so there is good, exclusive content to watch. Part of what makes its content popular has to do with social media and the company knows this which is why it’s added a new feature that lets you share Netflix shows to an Instagram story.

Netflix show to Instagram Story

In order to share a Netflix show, or a movie to your Instagram story, you must be running the latest version of the Netflix app. For good measure, make sure your Instagram app is also up to date.

Open Netflix and look for a show or a movie that you want to share. Tap the Share button on its details’ page and from the options that appear, select Instagram Stories. On iOS you will be prompted to allow Netflix to open Instagram. Android may, or may not show you a similar prompt. It depends on what version of the OS you’re running.

Netflix will create a story for the show or movie that you selected and then Instagram will be opened. The content for the story will of course come from Netflix. Once the story has been created, you will be given the option to edit it.

The editing options are the same that are available for a regular, non-Netflix story. Once you’ve edited the story, you can share it with everyone or with just a few close friends.

The story that Netflix creates features a poster image for the content that you’re sharing and its name. You cannot change the image and you do not get to choose which one is used. You can reposition the name of the show or movie but you cannot delete it, edit it, or change its font.

All other content that you can normally add to an Instagram story can be added in the editing phase. This includes polls, count down timers, etc. None of the stories feature any audio or any video.

This is a fairly neat feature as far as Netflix is concerned though perhaps it might have helped to make the story a bit interactive i.e., allowing users to tap on it and be taken to either a show/movie’s page (if it exists) or redirecting a user to the show on Netflix.

Android has a device tracking feature just like iOS does that lets you find where you device is. You can use it to track your device but you can also use it to call your device and find it in case you’ve misplaced it in the same room or house you’re in. The feature has always been baked into Android but Google has a dedicated Find My Device app to the Play Store. It gives you easy to access dashboard that you can use to view all your connected devices, and track them.

Find My Device On Android

Install Find My Device from the Google Play Store. You can get it from the link or if you later decide to search for it in the Google Play Store app, make sure you download the one that’s been published by Google.

Run the app and sign in to your Google account. You can, optionally, sign in as a guest user.

Once you’re signed in, you will need to allow the app access to your location. It will find your current device on the map, and you can call it if you want to. You can also use the Enable Secure & Erase option from the app.

The more options button i.e., the three dots at the top allow you to rename your device and switch accounts if you want to. You can also refresh the location for a device, and enable an option that requires you to always sign-in whenever the app is launched.

Installing this app isn’t necessary if you want to be able to find the device in your hands. Your phone’s location is tracked by Google and you can find it from your desktop web browser. All you have to do is Google Find my phone. You can Google Find my phone on your Android browser as well however using the app means you have far fewer taps and a better dashboard.

The Sign in as Guest option is for when you need to sign in with a Google account that you haven’t configured on your phone, or one that you don’t intend to use long-term. Whichever account you sign in with, it will be signed out the second you close the app.

This is Google’s own branded app so users are going to prefer it over other similar solutions and there are at least a hundred of them. They’re not all as reliable as Google’s own solution so the app will be a welcome addition.

Snapchat lets you share both images and videos. It has special lenses that work only with videos i.e., the animated ones and it has a neat loop feature that will automatically play your video on repeat. In a recent update, Snapchat has added a new loop feature that allows users to loop only a portion of the video they’ve recorded. It’s called Bounce. Here’s how you use Bounce on Snapchat.

Bounce On Snapchat

Update the Snapchat app on your phone to the latest version. Once you’ve done that, open the app and record a video. Apply a lens, or filter, whatever you want. Once you’re done, tap the loop button on the editing screen twice. It’s the one with two arrows at the very bottom of the toolbar on the right.

When you tap the loop button, a Bounce slider will appear on the screen. Drag it across the screen to select which part of the video you want to loop to.

Bounce is different from normal loop because it focuses on a specific part of the video. If you’ve recorded a full video but only a part of it is good, or you want to highlight it, the bounce loop is a good way to do it.

This is a new feature for Snapchat but it might have been borrowed from Instagram. Instagram has a feature called ‘Boomerang’ which is basically a part of a video being looped. Instagram has been ripping off features from Instagram for quite a while so there’s a bit of irony here. Snapchat may not have ‘ripped it off’, considering the app is normally ahead of other apps in terms of creative features. It may just have improved on the loop feature it originally had.

Bounce is actually better than Boomerang. Boomerang exists as a separate app. You have to record videos in Boomerang and then export them to Instagram. The feature isn’t native to the Instagram app which is probably why it isn’t used as much. Bounce is easier to use, and to discover for the average user i.e., someone who doesn’t use it as an advertising platform.

Videos that are shared with the Bounce loop won’t indicate what sort of loop has been used. Anyone watching the video may be able to guess that you’ve used Bounce but there won’t be any other indications to the fact. Once you loop a video with Bounce, anyone viewing it will not be able to watch the part that has been left out of the loop.

The OneNote 2016 desktop app has an odd little bug that prevents it from saving local backups. The app takes regular local backups so that you never lose your notes and notebooks. If you have sync enabled across devices or to OneDrive, the local backup may be slightly less important but important nevertheless. OneNote backs up everything automatically but you can also force it to take a back-up anytime. If you’re experiencing this bug, the app fails to create local backups of your notebooks. Fortunately, there is a simple way to fix OneNote not saving local backups. Here’s how.

This is a bug that only plagues OneNote for the desktop. The bug doesn’t appear on the OneNote UWP app bundled with Windows 10 simply because it doesn’t have a local backup feature.

To fix OneNote not saving local backups, open the app and go to File>Options. Select the ‘Save & Backup’ tab from the left. Under the ‘Backup’ section, look for the ‘Back up notebooks stored on SharePoint’ option and check it.

Click the ‘Back Up All Notebook Now’ button below this option and OneNote will save the backup this time around. A confirmation message appears on your screen to let you know the backup was created successfully.

This is a known bug. The backups fail to save regardless if you use SharePoint or not. This option is for those that use SharePoint but it seems to interfere with the local backup function even if you don’t use SharePoint.

Enabling this option rectifies the interference that is being caused. The bug has been around for awhile and so far this is the only available fix. The bug itself is a significant problem but because the fix is simple to apply, you won’t hear too many OneNote users complaining about it.

If this is the first you’re hearing about this bug, it’s probably a good idea to check this option out.

MS Office apps have color themes. They’re most noticeable in PowerPoint when you have to select a color theme for a presentation style. They exist in Word as well but you won’t know unless you insert a table, add a shape, or a heading. The color of a heading depends on the colors you select for your document. If you don’t like the color, font, and style, you can create custom heading styles in MS Word. You can customize everything from the color, the font, the size, and even the styles and turn it into a heading that you can quickly apply from the styles gallery.

Create Custom Heading Style

Open an MS Word file and type your heading. Select it, and click the little dropdown arrow at the bottom right of the Styles box.

A new panel called ‘Styles’ will open. At the very bottom of this panel is a button for new styles. Click it.

A new window will open. Here, you can compose your style. Give it a name so that you can find it easily in the style gallery later. Change the ‘Style type’ to ‘Linked’.  Next, open the ‘Style based on’ dropdown and select ‘Heading 1’.

This will apply the current Heading 1 style to the selected text. Now is when you should customize it. Change the font, its size, color, etc. Click ‘Ok’ when you’re done and your new style will be added to the gallery.

Selecting Heading Level

In MS Word, you have different heading levels. These levels form a hierarchy within the document. For example, Heading 2 comes under Heading 1 but above Heading 3. Keep that in mind when you select a heading in ‘Style based on’. You can not only create custom headings this way but also custom styles of titles and paragraphs. Your custom heading styles will appear in the table of contents when you add one. It’s level will of course depend on what you selected under the ‘Style based on’ section when you created your style.

When you create a new style, it appears automatically in the Styles gallery however, it will only appear in the current document. If the style you’ve created is one you intend to use in other documents as well, then you should save it as such. To have the style appear in the Styles gallery in other documents, select the ‘New documents  based on this template’ option when you create your style. If you’ve already created the heading style, right-click it in the gallery and select the ‘Modify’ option. You will see the same style formatting window from before where you can set your heading style to appear in other documents.