Exciting tips

Connecting to a WiFi network usually involves selecting the network from a list of available networks, and entering the password for it. This is how it works on phones, tablets, and desktops. There are devices that do not fall under these categories but need to connect to a WiFi network nonetheless. For those devices, there’s something called WPS i.e. WiFi Protected Setup. WPS is mainly for devices that cannot enter a password but you can also use WPS on Android to connect to a WiFi network.

WPS On Android

At the time of writing, the current version of Android is Android 7 which has support for WPS. There are rumors that it may be removed in the next version of Android i.e., Android 8.

Open the Settings app and tap Network and Internet. On the Network and Internet screen, tap WiFi. On the WiFi screen, you will see a Wi-Fi preferences option. Tap it. The Wi-Fi preferences screen has two WPS options; WPS Push button, and WPS Pin entry.

If your router has a WPS button, you will need to tap the WPS Push button option. Tap the WPS button on your router, and then tap this option on your Android phone to connect to the network.

If you router doesn’t have a WPS button, and the feature is enabled via a PIN, you need to tap the WPS Pin Entry option.

Normally, you have to tap the WPS button on your router first however, once you tap the WPS option on your Android phone, it gives you a small window of time to tap the button on your router in order to establish the connection.

When you tap the WPS Pin Entry option, Android will give you an eight digit PIN. This PIN needs to be added to your router’s control/admin panel. This means you will need access to a device, preferably a desktop, that’s already connected to the WiFi network so that you can enter the PIN. Like the WPS button option, you have a small amount of time in which you must enter the PIN in your router’s admin panel.

It goes without saying that if you have to use a PIN to connect to a WiFi network, then it’s better to just use the network SSID and password method to connect. The WPS button is faster and more convenient but the PIN method definitely isn’t.

We should mention that WPS isn’t considered safe so if you don’t use it to connect devices, it is best to disable it on your router.

If you use Excel to maintain schedules and/or time sheets, you might have needed to find the date of a specific day of the month. For example, what date does the second Monday of the month fall on? If you ever need to look up this same information but don’t want to use a calendar to do it, there’s a simple formula that you can use instead.

Variables

We’re dealing with the days in a week, and the months in a year so while there are variables in this formula, their scope is limited. That said, we’re going to give you the formula and explain which variable is which.

Year: The year of the month you want to look up the date for.

Month: The month you want to look up the date for.

Day of week: The day of the week you want to look up the date for.

Occurrence: The occurrence of the day i.e., first Monday, or second Friday, or third Wednesday.

These variables aren’t going to be used by name. All you can do is use cell addresses however, the formula will be much easier to customize for your own needs when it’s properly formatted. The above variables will act as column headers so that it’s easier for you to understand what is going on and edit the formula.

Formula

The generic formula is as follows however you will need to edit it with the example given so that it can return a date. Paste the following in an empty cell and use the example to edit it accordingly.

=DATE(A8,B8,1+7*D8)-WEEKDAY(DATE(A8,B8,8-C8))

Example

Months are numbered 1-12 starting with January. Days of the week are numbered 1-7 starting with Sunday which means Sunday is equal to 1, Monday is equal to 2, Tuesday is equal to 3, and so on.

In the above formula, the values that need to be edited to your needs are;

A8, B8, D8, and C8.

A8 = Year, B8 = Month, C8 = Day of week, and D8 = Occurrence

The editing is the only tricky part but once you’ve figured that out, it’s going to be easy to use this formula. It comes from Superuser user ale.

If you’re nervous about whether or not you’ve edited the values correctly, try a few out and use a calendar to check if you’re getting the correct results. The only confusing bit is between the day of the week and its occurrence. Remember that the value for the day of the week can be as high as 7 whereas its occurrence cannot go above 5.

Stories have become a lot like the like button. At one point, every social media app had one. Now that almost every social media app has stories, they need to try and differentiate the feature on their own respective platform. Instagram is doing this by making its stories interactive. It’s added a new feature that lets you add questions to your Instagram story. It works via stickers. Here’s how you can use Instagram story questions.

Instagram Story Questions

Make sure you’re running the latest version of the Instagram app. The feature appears to have rolled out to all users so it should be available if you’ve got the latest version of the app. It’s available on both iOS and Android.

Open the Instagram app and tap the camera button at the top left. Take a photo, or select one from your camera roll. You can also record a video, or pick one from the camera roll. Once you select a photo or video, tap the sticker button i.e., the smiley face button. This will open the slider with all the stickers. There should be a Questions sticker. Tap it.

Once you add the sticker, you can type your questions. You have the usual color options available for the text color.

Anyone who views the story can choose to answer the question you ask. To view their replies, tap your story and then tap the number of views at the bottom left. The replies aren’t public however, if you tap a response you will see a ‘Share response’ option. When you share a response, it takes you to the Story screen. You can add a video or picture and the question, along with the response, appears as a sticker on top. The response is shared to your story though you can probably send to to your friends too.

You can limit who can reply to your Instagram story questions. To limit the audience, go to the Story controls. Under the ‘Allow Message Replies’ section, you will see three options; Everyone, People you follow, and Off. The Off option allows you to disable replies to questions but that also makes the question feature useless unless it’s a rhetorical question you want to ask.

The feature isn’t bad. It compels people to do something other than just view a story. It’s definitely going to be great for brands but for ordinary users, it’s an easy way to interact with followers.

Cross referencing is essential if you have a particularly large document. It allows the reader to go back to relevant parts of a document that support or elaborate a particular section of it. Cross referencing is a very well developed feature in Microsoft Word which is particularly useful for academic work. You can cross reference almost any element in your document. If you need to reference numbered list items, it’s pretty easy.

Reference numbered list items

Open the document that you want to reference a numbered list in. Your list should already be added to the document, as should the paragraph that you want to cross reference it to. If it’s not there, add it first.

Once you’re done, click inside the document where you want to reference the list item. Go to the References tab, and click Cross-reference.

In the window that opens, the Reference Type should be set to ‘Numbered item’. The ‘Insert reference to’ should be set to ‘Page number (full context)’. Your list will automatically be added in the window. Select the item that you want to reference and it will be added to the document.

You should also make sure that the ‘Insert as hyperlink’ option is selected if the document will be read on a device as opposed to as a hard copy. If you Ctrl+Click on the reference, it will jump to the list item.

If you need to reference an item in a bulleted list, you can’t. You will have to change it to a numbered list if it has to be referenced.

You should know that the ‘Insert reference to’ dropdown option determines how the reference is added. If you go with ‘Page number’ the reference will only add the page number that the list appears on. If you go with the ‘Page number (full context)’ option, it will insert the number of the item in the list and it’s only useful for reading as a soft copy.

Depending on the audience of your document, and how it will be read i.e. hard or soft copy, you should play with these options. Unfortunately, you can’t get a leading reference where the page number and the item number are both given. You can insert the entire item as is and that is probably a good option to go with if the document will be read in hard copy form.

There’s another option you can look at; Above/below. This tells the reader if the referenced item appears before, or after the current point in the document making it easier to find it.

Managing your inbox on a phone is different than when you do it from the desktop. There are several factors to consider when reading emails on your phone; the smaller screen, multi-tasking on a phone, and making sure you don’t miss anything important. Email clients on the phone aren’t even as sophisticated as those on the desktop but Gmail makes a reasonably good effort. One feature it has is that it automatically groups top emails from various categories and this helps avoid missing important messages. If you don’t like the feature, you can disable top emails in the Gmail apps from its settings. Here’s how.

Disable top emails

Open the Gmail app and tap the hamburger icon at the top left and scroll to the very bottom of the navigation drawer. Tap Settings. If you have more than one account configured, you will have the option to disable top emails on a per-account basis. Select the account you want to disable top emails for.

Scroll down to the very end and look for the ‘Enable bundling of top emails’ option and turn the switch off. Make sure you quit the app on your device after making this change.

When you next open the app and visit one of the inboxes, the top emails will not be grouped together. Instead, everything will be sorted in chronological order.

This feature, and this option isn’t available on the web version of Gmail.

Enabling this option again is fairly easy however, turning the switch on doesn’t work as quickly as turning it off does. It seems the app will need a little time, and for some new emails to arrive. The app will then analyse and pick which ones are the most important. Top emails are only picked for the Social, Promotions, and Updates inboxes. For the Primary inbox, you won’t see top emails grouped together.

If you like items being grouped together but don’t like the top email bundles, you can change your primary inbox from the same account settings. There’s an Inbox type option that allows you to group important emails, as identified by Gmail, and replace the default Primary inbox with it. Other options include, Unread first, Starred first, and Priority inbox. All these options replace the default inbox which is a chronological view of your one-on-one conversations. Again, this can be set on a per-account basis if you have more than one account configured in the Gmail app.

If Microsoft Word ever crashes or you experience a system crash while you have an MS Word document open you can likely recover most if not all of your document through the auto-recovery copy that the app saves regularly. In most cases, this will always save you when something goes wrong. If you’re however looking to be extra safe for when Murphy’s law kicks in a night before something important is due, you should consider changing the MS Word auto recovery folder’s location to a cloud drive. You can use just about any service that has a desktop app and syncs files to the cloud. Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive are all great options. Here’s how to change the Auto Recovery folder’s location.

Open MS Word and go to File>Options. Go to the Save tab and look for the ‘AutoRecover file location’ field. Click browse and select a folder that is located inside your Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive folder.

The added advantage of having MS Word save the auto recovery file to a cloud drive is that it’s backed up to more than one location i.e., it’s saved to a local drive and it’s also synced to cloud storage. With some cloud storage services, you can even take advantage of the file restore feature to get recovered files once they’ve been removed by MS Word itself. In the event of disk failure, you don’t necessarily risk document loss and you can resume working on the document by accessing the recovered file on a different device or system.

You can change the auto recovery file location for just about any MS Office app.

You can add graphs, tables, images, and text boxes to a document in Microsoft Word. It doesn’t have a snapping feature like PowerPoint does however there is a ruler that allows you to align items. The ruler, by default, is scaled in inches however, if you’re not comfortable working with inches, you can change the ruler units in Microsoft Word.

The ruler units help not just with aligning different elements in a document, and managing the width and height of cells, columns, and rows in tables.

Ruler Units In Microsoft Word

Open Microsoft Word, and go to File>Options. This will open the Microsoft Word options window. Go to the Advanced tab, and scroll down to the Display section. In this section, open the dropdown next to ‘Show measurements in units of’, and select the units you want the ruler to measure in.

You can choose inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, and picas. Once you’ve selected the units, click Ok and return to the main Microsoft Word interface.

Go to the View tab, and select the Ruler checkbox to show the ruler in your document. It will reflect the new units that you’ve selected.

Changing the ruler units will not upset the alignment of the different objects that you’ve already set in the document. This change will impact all documents that you open in Microsoft Word however, when you share a document, and someone opens it using the same app, the ruler will show up in the units they prefer.

Again, this will not impact the alignment of items in the document. The alignment is only upset if the system that a document is being viewed on has set up defaults that override the document’s own formatting. Additionally, if the document was converted using other apps or services, like Google Docs, the alignment may be upset but again the ruler and the units it uses will not be to blame.

You can change the units any time you need to and doing so frequently will not damage the document. The changes you make in Microsoft Word will not change the ruler units used in other apps of the Office productivity suite. If you need to change the ruler units for other apps e.g., PowerPoint, you can do so in much the same way. For example, if you open PowerPoint’s options (File>Options), and go to the Advanced tab, you will find a Display section. The section will have the same ruler units setting as Word does. Excel doesn’t have this setting and doesn’t need it.

Instagram has been working to improve the messaging side of its app. It may be a place to share photos but it is slowly also becoming a messaging platform for many users. We’d be lying if we said messaging wasn’t something everyone was getting into and Instagram isn’t any different. The newest feature to  be added to the app allows you to send audio messages on Instagram.

Audio messages on Instagram

Make sure you’re running the latest version of the Instagram app on you phone. This feature is available for both  iOS and Android and it works only via direct messages.

Open the Instagram app and tap the paper plane button at the top. This will take you to your Direct Messages screen. Start a new chat thread or tap an existing one. In the enter text field you will see a mic icon. Tap and hold it to record an audio message. When you release it, the message will be sent.

There aren’t any apparent limitations on how long a video message can be and whether or not it will expire after a certain period of time. At present, the feature is implemented with little attention to convenience. If you look at the same feature on Whatsapp, you will see that you can record voice messages in a hands-free mode which makes it far easier to use.

Instagram has been working to improve the social aspect of its app for a while now. It does routinely copy features from Snapchat to make its core function i.e., sharing pictures and videos, more interactive but it has been introducing new ways that people can connect with each other quickly.

In October, it introduced Nametags which are basically QR codes for following users. What’s odd is that this feature comes after video chat was introduced. Not only has Instagram supported video chat since June of this year, it also supports group video chats. The audio messages maybe ought to have come first but regardless the sequence, they will be useful.

Instagram is owned by Facebook and the company is always looking to corner the market on photo sharing and messaging apps. Considering it owns both Instagram and Whatsapp, and obviously Facebook Messenger, it’s safe to say that it has the monopoly it wants. Facebook has been in the news for breaching trust and being shady about user data and privacy so if people eventually abandon the platform, they will look for alternatives. It helps if Facebook already owns the popular ones.

You can use Window 10 with a local account, or with a Microsoft Account. A Microsoft account doesn’t necessarily have to be one that’s created on one of Microsoft’s domains e.g., Outlook, or Live. If you have a Gmail account, you can use it to create a Microsoft Account and sign in to Windows 10. The account lets you use more of the features on the OS but it also gives you a second email that you can send and receive emails from. If you want, you can add your Microsoft Account to Outlook and send and receive emails from it. Here’s how.

Microsoft Account to Outlook

You must have Outlook installed on your desktop and you must have a Microsoft Account as well. You do not necessarily need to sign in with it on your desktop just so long as you have one.

Open Outlook and go to File>Info. Click the Add Account button at the very top.

On the window that opens, select the ‘Manual setup or additional server types’ option, and click Next.

On the next window, select the ‘Outlook.com or Exchange ActiveSync compatible service’ option, and click Next.

On the next screen, enter your login information for your Microsoft account. In the server field, enter;

eas.outlook.com

Click Next, and Outlook will connect with your account. If the password is correct, you will be told that authentication succeeded. You can close the window and use Outlook with your Microsoft account.

Two factor authentication

If you’ve enabled two factor authentication for your Microsoft Account, the password you enter will not work. You will get an error saying the password is incorrect. In order to sign into Outlook you need to generate an app password.

Visit this Security page, and sign in with your Microsoft account. Once signed in, click the ‘more security options’ link.

On the next page, scroll down to the App Passwords section, and click ‘Create a new app password’. This will generate a new password for you. Use this password and enter it instead of the password you normally use to sign in to your Microsoft Account.

Remember that your Microsoft account is still separate from the domain account that your email is for. For example, my Microsoft account email is a Gmail address. When I use it to sign into Microsoft’s website or Outlook online, I use the Microsoft account password that I’ve set for it. When I use it to sign into Gmail, I use my Gmail password and get access to my Gmail emails. One account does not effect the other no matter what.

Desktops and smartphones are very capable. There’s often debate on how effective a smartphone can be and if it can replace a desktop in dire need. That said, there is still a problem when it comes to working across different platforms. If you own an iPhone and a Mac, you can easily sync your clipboard. If you own an iPhone but prefer Windows 10 for your desktop, you cannot sync your clipboard.

Often, when these limitations impede work, users resort to crude alternatives. One easy way to send text from your clipboard across devices is to message them to yourself. Not a lot messaging apps let you do that but you can send messages to yourself via Facebook Messenger.

Send Messages To Yourself

You can send messages to yourself from Facebook Messenger web and from its apps. The process is simple, and the same.

On Facebook Messenger web, click the new message button at the top right of the column on the left. In the To field, type in your own name. Your profile will be listed at the top along with a list of all groups that you’re a part of. Select your own profile and send a text message or an image.

On the smartphone app, tap the new message button at the top right. Again, type in your own name and select your profile. Send a text message or an image from your camera roll.

Web apps are often used to work with different platforms. Some platforms are purposefully kept closed and for this reason, other platforms are unable to freely communicate with them.

There is also a matter of security. While it would be convenient for any phone and any desktop to be able to communicate with each other, it may also be a security risk for devices to be so open. This is why certain impediments must be placed to hinder communication that is too open.

Lastly, convenience and hardware are also an issue. You can, for example easily copy images from an iPhone or an Android phone on a Windows 10 desktop but you do need to connect them via a cable. Android phones don’t all use the same type of cable, and users may not always have the cable on hand. Apps like the Photos app on Windows 10 and its companion app for iOS and Android make up for this but it’s only for photos and not for items copied to the clipboard.