502 tips · new ones added continuously
Every tip is one concrete thing you will do better or faster. Filter by what you use and who you are — or just search.
Windows and Mac both have automatic backup built in — all they need is a drive. Hourly file versions, and a deleted file back in two clicks.
Type docs.new or sheets.new into your browser — and a new document opens right away. word.new and excel.new from Microsoft work too.
Shift+F5
Open a document and Word dumps you at the start. Shift+F5 jumps exactly to where you last stopped writing.
Word and Google Docs can both compare two versions of a file and highlight every difference. No more reading contracts line by line.
Ctrl+Shift+8
The ¶ button reveals spaces, tabs, and page breaks. Suddenly you can see exactly why text jumps where it shouldn't — and what to delete.
Teach Word that “dph” means “value added tax.” AutoCorrect can expand your own custom shortcuts across every Office app.
Hold Alt and drag with the mouse — Word selects a rectangle of text across lines. Perfect for deleting a column of characters that a normal selection can't grab.
Asterisks around a word make it bold, underscores make it italic, a dash makes a bullet. A longer work message suddenly looks like a document.
The “This site wants to show notifications” popup can be switched off globally with one toggle. Sites stop asking — and you stop dismissing them.
Gmail, your calendar, or Teams can run in their own window with an icon on the taskbar — no address bar and no risk of an accidentally closed tab.
Zoom and Teams can filter out barking, keyboard clatter, and next-door drilling. Just switch noise suppression to high in your audio settings.
You don't have to email links to yourself. Chrome generates a QR code for a page, and Chrome and Firefox can both send a tab straight to your phone.
A site won't log you in, or it's stuck in a loop? Don't clear your whole history. Cookies can be wiped for just that one troublesome site.
Colleagues will forgive a grainy picture, but not a booming mic sound from across the room. A mic near your mouth is the cheapest meeting upgrade there is.
Slack and Teams can both send a message later — an arrow next to the send button, or a right-click. Write the idea down now, don't disturb your colleague.
Shift+Delete
Does your browser keep offering a typo or an old site? Select the suggestion with the arrow key and press Shift+Delete — it's gone for good.
One function pulls data from another spreadsheet into yours — and keeps it current. No more manually copying numbers between files.
Sharing your full desktop shows colleagues your notifications and half-typed messages too. Sharing one window shows only what you meant to show.
Space
Stay muted for the whole meeting. When you want to say something, hold the key, talk, release — and the microphone mutes itself again.
Holding an arrow key or Backspace repeats at a speed you can configure. Two sliders almost nobody ever touches — and typing instantly feels snappier.
For subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play, you can cancel the trial a minute after activating it: it still runs to the end, and nothing gets charged. Elsewhere, a reminder does the job.
A work laptop and your own computer on one desk doesn't have to mean two keyboards. A USB switch flips between them with a single button.
Need to send three pages out of a fifty-page PDF? Print the range “12-14” to PDF and the new file is born. No installing anything.
A contract, an attachment, and a scanned addendum, all in one file: Preview handles it on a Mac, free PDF24 on Windows — just don't upload sensitive documents anywhere.
Highlighting and annotating a PDF is handled by the free Acrobat Reader, Edge, and Preview on Mac. Feedback belongs in the file, not in a five-paragraph email.
Chrome, Edge, and Firefox can all fill in a PDF form directly. And when the form has no fillable fields, Edge and Firefox just let you type the text straight onto it.
Before a meeting or a coworker pulls you away, write one sentence: what you're doing and what the next step is. Coming back then takes seconds, not a quarter hour.
With an external monitor and keyboard, a laptop can run closed and save desk space. Just change one setting for what closing the lid does.
Most people sit in their chair exactly as it arrived from the store. Three checkpoints — elbows at desk height, knees at a right angle, feet on the floor — take a minute to fix.
Default pointer and scroll-wheel speed is tuned for monitors from a decade ago. Two sliders save hundreds of arm movements a day.