Chromeonlyletsyouclearrecenthistoryorallhistory68 5 - 18 February 2020
A
Mostbrowsersworkin theopposite
waytowhatyouwant,deletingthe
mostrecenthistoryratherthanthe
oldest.Forexample,selectsettingsin
the ChromemenuandclickAdvanced,
thengotothe‘Privacyandsecurity’
section.Clicking‘Clearbrowsingdata’
lets youclearthelasthour,day,week,
fourweeksoralldata.Thereis nooption
to deletedataolderthana givendate.
ThenewversionofEdge,whichis
basedonthesameChromiumcodeas
Chrome,offerssimilaroptions.Open
the menuandclickSettings,thenselect
This fortnight, Roland has been playing with all the gadgets he picked up in the January salesAsk the Expert
Q
I recently bought a new
Windows 10 laptop to
replace my old Windows 7 one.
If I place a shortcut on the desktop,
it has the familiar Windows 7
curved arrow. However, placing
a file on the desktop shows a white
tick in a green circle. What does
this mean?
L Harris, via emailA
While setting up your new
computer, you must have also set
up OneDrive. This backs up and syncs
certain system folders, such as
Desktop, Documents and Pictures.
The green tick means that the file onthedesktopis syncedtoOneDrive
andstoredonline.Thesesyncedfiles
canbeviewedattheOneDrive
websitein a browser,whichcouldbe
usefulif youneedtoaccessthem
fromanothercomputerordevice.See which files
are backed up
in OneDrive
GENERAL PC
‘Privacy and services’ on the left. Click
‘Choose what to clear’ in the ‘Clear
browsing data’ section. Again, there are
options for clearing recent or all history,
but none for older entries.
There are, however, ways to access
your old browsing data. For example,
go to OneDrive (onedrive.live.com),
click your picture in the top-right corner
and select ‘My account’, then click the
Privacy tile. On the next page, select
Browse to display your Edge browsing
history. As you scroll down, more of
your history loads, going further back intime. There is a Clear button next to
each item but no way to select ‘All items
older than...’.
You can perform a similar action in
Chrome. Click your profile picture, go to
your account and view your web activity
in the ‘Data & personalisation’ section.
In both cases, however, deleting items
one at a time would take forever.
One browser does have what you are
looking for – Safari on macOS. Open
Preferences, choose General and you’ll
get the option to clear history older
than a day, week, month or year.VIDEO
Don’t buy a teleprompterQ
I’d like to make some YouTube
videos but I’m not very good at
memorising my scripts. Is there a
website or app I can download to my
iPad that will enlarge the text and scroll
it as I speak, so I can read to camera like
they do on the television news?
Ray Green, via emailA
If you’ve got an iPad, you don’t
need to download anything or even
go online because this ‘autocue’
functionality is built into the preinstalled
Pages app. Open the app and import
your text into a new file (assuming
you wrote it somewhere else). Tap the
menu button (three dots in a circle,
top-right) and choose Presenter Mode.
This enlarges the text of the document
and inverts it to white text on a black
background. Tap the screen to start
it scrolling.
To tweak the settings, such as the
scroll speed, tap the ‘Aa’ button.Apple’s Pages app can turn your iPad into a teleprompterOneDrive can backup Desktop, Documents
and Pictures to online storage