Tips & tricks

Shift+F5 in Word: jump to your last edit

Shift+F5

Open a document and Word dumps you at the start. Shift+F5 jumps exactly to where you last stopped writing.

Hidden formatting marks: why a document behaves strangely

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.

Ctrl+Enter: a new page without hammering Enter

Ctrl+Enter

Paginating with twenty presses of Enter falls apart at the first edit. Ctrl+Enter inserts a real page break that stays put.

AutoCorrect as a shortcut dictionary: long names from three letters

Teach Word that “dph” means “value added tax.” AutoCorrect can expand your own custom shortcuts across every Office app.

Android as a Windows webcam: you already own the best camera

A phone's camera puts the built-in webcam in its pocket. Windows 11 can connect it wirelessly as a regular camera for Teams and Meet alike.

Pinning in Teams: important chats stay on top, key messages above the conversation

Right-click pins a chat to the top of the list, and a key message above the whole conversation — visible to everyone. No more hunting for a link from last week.

Headphones with a mic for meetings: sound matters more than the camera

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.

Share a window, not the whole screen

Sharing your full desktop shows colleagues your notifications and half-typed messages too. Sharing one window shows only what you meant to show.

Reader mode: an article without ads or popup banners

F9

One click strips ads, menus, and recommended articles off the page. What's left is text and images — like in a book.

Jump to any slide while presenting: type the number, hit Enter

During a slideshow, type a slide number and press Enter — you're there. No clicking back through twenty slides in front of an audience.

Slim down a presentation: compress images right inside PowerPoint

Presentation is 80 MB and won't go through email? Built-in image compression shrinks it to a fraction of the size — two clicks, no visible loss.

Pull just a few pages out of a PDF — by printing to PDF

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.

Merge multiple PDFs into one — without paying for Acrobat

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.

Free PDF comments: mark up documents without paying for Acrobat

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.

Fill out a PDF form in your browser — don't print, don't scan

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.

Lending your phone? Lock it into one app

Guided Access on iPhone and app pinning on Android keep a phone stuck in a single app — a kid watching a cartoon, a colleague viewing a photo, nothing more.

Text from paper straight into a field: Live Text and Google Lens

Stop retyping details off paper. iPhone can scan text with the camera directly into a text field; Android does the same through Google Lens.

Camera at eye level and light from the front: two minutes for a better impression

A laptop sitting on the desk shoots your chin and the ceiling from below, and a window behind you turns you into a silhouette. Camera height and light direction fix more than a new webcam ever will.

A free booking page: Google Calendar can do what Calendly does

Send a link, the other person picks an open slot themselves, and the meeting lands on both calendars. A built-in Google Calendar feature almost nobody knows about.

Find a time: let the calendar show when everyone's free

Don't arrange a meeting time over email. Google Calendar and Outlook lay attendees' calendars side by side, and you spot the open slot at a glance.

Choppy Video Call? A Cable Fixes What Wi-Fi Can't

“You froze” usually doesn't mean slow internet — it means unstable Wi-Fi. An Ethernet cable is the single most reliable upgrade for calls.

Edge Will Read an Article — or a PDF — Out Loud: Ctrl+Shift+U

Ctrl+Shift+U

Built-in read-aloud with surprisingly natural voices. Listen to an article while cooking or on the way home from work.

The Two-Screen Meeting Rule: One for People, One for Notes

Put the meeting window on the monitor with the camera, notes and materials on the other. You look people in the eye, never share anything private, and minutes write themselves.

Group Work Without Overwriting Each Other: Suggesting Mode in Docs

When everyone in a shared document just rewrites directly, changes get lost and nobody knows who deleted what. Suggesting mode turns edits into proposals to approve.

Test Data on Demand: Fictional but Realistic

Testing a spreadsheet, a form, or a mailing? Have AI generate fifty fictional rows with names and amounts instead of copying real data.

Two Lists Side by Side: AI Finds What's Missing

Attendance against sign-ups, payments against orders: paste two lists and AI lists what's in one and missing from the other — even through typos.

Proofreading That Doesn't Rewrite You: Fix Only the Errors

AI loves to improve your style, even when nobody asked it to. Tell it to fix only spelling and punctuation and list the changes — your voice stays yours.

Where's the Setting? Ask AI Instead of Digging Through Menus

Tell AI the app, version, and what you're looking for — you get the exact path in the settings. No more clicking blind or following guides written for a five-year-old version.

Smart Quotes and Dashes: Typographic Proofreading by AI

Before you publish, have AI fix only the typography: smart quotes, dashes instead of hyphens, spacing around numbers and units. It leaves the wording alone.

PDFs opening in the wrong app? Change your default apps once and for all

Every PDF opens in Edge even though you read PDFs elsewhere. Photos open in an app you never chose. Two minutes in Settings → Default apps and files start opening where you actually want them.