17 Computer Tips You'll WISH You Knew Sooner

Mentioned Links:

▼ Time Stamps: ▼
0:00 - Intro
0:19 - Special Characters Alphabetical Order
1:25 - Windows File Groupings
2:51 - Expanded Context Menu
3:43 - Windows 11: Bringing Back Old Context Menu
4:02 - A Very Excellent Thing
5:31 - Digitizing Product Manuals
6:46 - Fixing Windows Device Power Management
8:35 - Terminal Preview Admin Trick
9:52 - Extracting Text From Images
10:58 - Shortcut Directly to BIOS Menu
12:33 - Deleting Text Word-By-Word
12:55 - Sending Window to Back
13:05 - Scrolling to Zoom Common Shortcut
13:20 - The Quick Assist Tool
14:09 - "Turn it off and on again" (But Better)
15:17 - Windows Long File Paths
16:41 - Finding Launch Parameters
18:17 - Increase Event Viewer Log Size
19:41 - Set UAC to Highest Setting

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[RobBulmahn]

I really hate the exclamation point trick. At work, everything is on shared network drives. It was bad enough when some genius started numbering all the folders (so that you needed to know its specific number instead of just being able to start typing and jump to a name), but then people started fighting over top billing, so you'd see a bunch of exclamations, and other stuff, and it all makes for a giant unnavigable mess.

[bhgemini]

⚠️One thing about tossing owners manuals. If you have a house fire, burglary, etc and don't have receipts for a claim. Many insurance companies accept the physical manuals as proof of purchase. This saved my bacon on a large claim. ⚠️
Edit to add: I do both physical and the pdf copies.

[solarmpire]

ctrl+0 = return back to 100% after zooming in or out.

[davidadams]

CTRL + SHIFT + ESC to instantly open Task Manager. Also, your CTRL + BACKSPACE/DELETE to delete by word also works to move the cursor by words using CTRL + L/R-ARROW, and select by words using CTRL + SHIFT + L/R-ARROW. Up and Down, moves or selects text by line and End and Home moves or selects text by paragraph.

[jesse]

Hold Ctrl+Shift when you click "Open in Terminal" to run in Administrator mode. This trick works in other places in Windows too.

[Kat]

There's another tip that you've mentioned before but I'm surprised you didn't mention in this video. In almost all native Windows popup dialogs (error messages, yes/no, ok/cancel, etc.) you can hit CTRL + C to effectively copy an identical text version of the dialog to the clipboard so you can share the exact contents quickly without having to take a screenshot and send it to someone. This could also make it more effective to look up any details about an error, just paste it into notepad and copy the part you want so you won't have to go typing the error message by hand into google or something like that.

[tyrelli]

Most useful one I learned a couple months ago I use almost every day now. When exploring a file directory and the file name is too long to fit in the column and it truncates off, making you have to drag the divider awkwardly to the right or left to read. Just simply "double-left click" the mouse over the divider (say between Name and Date Modified column header) and the column will expand to the width of the longest file name in the column. Simple, but very useful.

[madcow]

I had an undocumented launch parameter that I needed. A small program could only open from within another large main program. In Task Manger, Processes tab, right click on a column header and enable Command Line. This shows you what launch parameters were used to launch a process. In my case, the main program launched the other program with a big long key. I typed that into a shortcut for the small program and it opens just fine without the main program.
You cannot copy this value, so the Text Extractor tip can be really useful here if it's a long launch parameter.

[thisislilraskal]

When you drop & drag a file from one drive to another, the file will be _copied_ by default, but if you _hold_ _shift_ while dragging & dropping the file will be moved.

[Yakuzaxpl]

I included some shortcuts I know:

F5 – Refreshes the page, but Crtl + F5 refreshes the page and clears the cache (this may be useful if errors appear on a specific page)
ctrl + scroll (as mentioned in the video) zooms the text, but e.g. Google Chrome crtl + 0 resets to the default view
Win+D will show your desktop and press it again to display opened windows on the screen again.

I found out about this recently:
Ctr+Win+Alt+Shift+[letter]
W - opens Word
O - opens Outlook
T - opens Teams
P - opens Powerpoint
and so on... try a different letter and surprise yourself :D

And that's an interesting one:
If you have several windows open. Grab one and start shaking. Everything will be minimized and the window you were shaking will stay.

[mikepanchaud]

Another way to get to the command prompt is to just type 'cmd' into the address bar of the folder you are in. CMD will open in that folder!

[Lofote]

Funny that you mentioned the "use ! or some character at the beginning of a file name to customize alphabetical ordering, yet the most important way to sort filenames or folders that start with a DATE you do not use (as I saw in your example at #1): Always use YYYY-MM-DD way, for example you put your trip to Italy pictures in Sep 28th 2023 into a folder named "2023-09-28 Trip to Italy", and not some stupid localized way like "09-28-2023" or "28.09.2023" or "Sep 28, 2023", because that will not work with alphabetical order at all. Plus always use leading zeros, so use "2023-09-28" and not "2023-9-28". And always use 4-digit year names, that way it is also clear, that the first thing is in fact a year ("23-09-28" could also be the 23th of September 2028).

[Stratelier]

The file naming trick is valuable in INVERSE proportion to how much you actually use it.

Because if every file is the most important one, _none of them are!_

[jomascarbProc]

Just to clarify, the period and backslash to run the script it's not because powershell is weird, it serves to point that you're running a file inside the directory you're in. When you just type the file name it reads as if you're trying to run an environment variable

[fluffy_fluffinity]

Having to type ".\" at the start of the command is not a weirdness of Power Shell but a security feature. Not having this would allow potential attackers to fake existing programs on your system by having programs in your current directory with the same name. If you want to execute a program in the current directory you have to be explicit about it. On Linux it's the same

[danytoob]

Theo Joe, 1 More - Love these tips! Some I do know, many I've forgotten (LOL) but always useful. One you didn't mention here (though you likely have before) is the Windows "Steps Recorder" . Start it then do whatever you want to record (ie - clicking through Settings options to a specific function) ... the recording gives text instructions and pics of each step process you did. Great teaching or help tool!

[EdwinvandenAkker]

1:26 _"…Group files in downloadfolder…"_
That's a very useful tip. I have a Mac, and apparently it works in MacOS as well. Thanks!

[pedro]

I use exclamation point always, learned it in the mod community to organize mod load order.

[sectorgamma]

12:33 there are many more modifiers for text editing and selection. You can use Ctrl + Left/right arrow key to move around text one word at a time rather than one character. Also, you can add shift to any text movement input so that it also _selects_ all the text from the previous cursor position to the one after the movement. For example, Shift + end (self explanatory), or Shift + Ctrl + Left/right arrow key to select an entire word. You can then chain more movements while keeping shift held down to add to that selection or modify it. This is absolutely crucial to know if you spend a long time editing text or coding, it makes the workflow that much faster.

[jovetj]

18:02 My own pro tip: with any standard Message Box displayed with the focus, you can press *Ctrl+C* to copy all of the text (title bar and message text and buttons) to the Clipboard. You can then paste it somewhere to save it as needed.