Blog
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Refresh Many Excel Reports Automatically
Today I’d like to share a little homemade tool I whipped up to save me the tedious yet trivial recurring chore of opening several Excel workbooks and clicking the Refresh button inside each one.
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Composite and Clean Up Screenshots
Instead of just capturing your entire screen for guides or demos, composite your screenshots in PowerPoint to make them really shine. Here’s how I do it.
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On Taskbar Text Labels
Having identical text of “Mi…” repeated next to every Microsoft program doesn’t help the you find your application. It provides no value and slows you down. Just look at this, this mess isn’t improving usability:
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Sleeker Android Ticker Text Notifications
Today I am sharing an awesome Android app that minimalizes obtrusive screen-obscuring notifications while at the same time providing more detail. Check out this side-by-side comparison.
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Remote Desktop or Network Shares with Microsoft Account Sign-In
If you sign-in to your PC using a Microsoft Account, you may be unable to connect to it with Remote Desktop or with network file sharing, or locally schedule tasks using that account. Here’s how to fix it.
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Dude, Where’s My Cursor?
Judging by how many ways they’ve come up with to solve it, I guess Microsoft believes everyone has a hard time finding their mouse pointer on their big giant displays these days. Here’s my methods.
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Windows Volume Gestures
When you’re driving down the freeway and your favorite song comes on the radio, I bet you can reach out and adjust the volume knob without ever taking your eyes off the road: your muscle memory kicks in, and you instinctively know where to reach without even looking. This is a practical demonstration of Fitts’ Law.
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Opening Multiple Instances of Excel, and Why (Power Query multitasking)
Although it seems like every Excel workbook that you open is a standalone instance, Excel is basically still the MDU application it’s always been. The Office team deploys some clever tricks to hide it, but in some situations it becomes apparent. Let’s explore.
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PSA: Microsoft asks you to set your Xbox Series to Energy Saver Mode
At launch, the Xbox Series S/X systems were very inefficient power-wise, drawing nearly 30 watts of juice in standby mode, 24 hours a day. With 12 million consoles sold and counting, this was projected to require 4 billion kWh of electricity within just a few years. This is as much as a year’s output from a large power plant, releasing more than 3 million tons of CO2 into our air just to power consoles that weren’t even being used. Things have improved, but it needs you to flip the switch.
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Change a Folder’s Name Without Renaming It
Folder names in File Explorer don’t necessarily reflect the actual name of the directory. But why?