Readers’ Tips
Send your tips to [email protected] – win a Web User Back Issues disc! 5 - 18 February 2020^71
the General tab, scroll down to the Stars
section. Next to Presets, click ‘all stars’,
then click Save at the bottom.
You can use these stars and symbols
to group together specific types of email,
and make them searchable. Let’s say you
add an orange star to emails from family
members, you can then search for them
by typing has:orange-star in Gmail’s
search box. If you add the green tick to
a particular group of emails, search for
has:green-check. To show all emails
with the yellow exclamation symbol,
search for has:yellow-bang.
If you’re not sure which search terms
to use, hover you mouse over a symbol in
the Stars section of Settings, General to
see its name.
Erika Carter, via email
BROWSERS
Add a real search bar to
Chrome’s New Tab page
When you open a new tab in Chrome,
a search bar appears in the centre of the
page. However, as soon as you start
typing in it, you are redirected to the
address bar at the top. This always
annoys me, so I’ve changed it into a
properly functioning search bar by going
to chrome://flags/#ntp-realbox
and switching it to Enabled. This, in
Google’s own words, changes the search
bar from a “fakebox” to a “realbox”.
Restart your browser and you’re all set.
Marie Donovan, via email
BROWSERS
Bookmark open tabs in
Chrome
I love that I can set tabs to automatically
open when I launch Chrome, but this can
sometimes make the browser sluggish.
To get around this problem, I save all my
current tabs in a bookmarks folder, so
they can be launched in my own time.
Open all the tabs you want to save,
click the three-dot menu button and
hover over Bookmarks, then select
‘Bookmark all tabs’. Name your tab
collection and save it. You can then
retrieve these tabs by clicking the folder
under the address bar or by revisiting
Bookmarks in the browser settings.
Jon J McReady, via emailGENERALPC
Rotate the screen
I’ve found an interesting Windows
feature but it may only work depending
on the type of graphics card you have
installed. Right-click an empty part of the
desktop and select Graphics Options,
Hotkeys, then Enable. Now hold down
Ctrl+Alt+D with one hand (it’s a bit
tricky) and use the other hand to
press the up, down, left or right arrows.
The screen display will, in response,
flip upside down, and to the left or
right.Ctrl+Alt+D+Upputsit backtheright way up again.
I think this trick is for setting up a
monitor or TV in portrait mode rather
than landscape, or maybe it’s for
pranking people at work so when they
come back from a break, they find their
screen is upside down!
Luke Parkinson, via emailBROWSERS
Send a web page to another
device
I’ve found a new
feature in
Chrome. Go to
any website and
click in the
address box. At
the right-hand
side, you’ll see a
small icon that
looks like a
laptop and
phone. Click it to
see a list of your
other devices
that have
Chrome installed. Select one and the
address of the website you’re on is sent
to that device as a notification. You can
then click or tap it to open the website in
a new Chrome tab.
If you’re using Chrome on an Android
phone, tap the three-dot menu and select
Share. Tap ‘Send to your devices’ to see a
list of computers and devices, then select
one to send the web page to it.
Oliver Rooke, via emailOrganise your emails using stars by
enabling the feature in Gmail’s settings
BLUNDER OF THE FORTNIGHT
Have you managed to fix a PC-related disaster?
If so, please send your story to [email protected]I made the leap and decided to
upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows- Everything went smoothly at first
but, for some reason, Windows 10
didn’t load properly and just displayed
a white screen. After spending some
time trying to resolve the problem,
which included using a memory stick
with the upgrade on it, I still had no joy.
Despite the partial upgrade, I
managed to log in via Windows Safe
Mode. After hunting through the
Advanced settings and accessing the
System Reset, I noticed an offer at the
bottom of the box to revert back to
Windows 7. This option is only
available for 10 days after upgrading
to Windows 10.
Switch back to Windows 7
WINDOWS
My laptop has now reverted to the
old OS, although there is some small
text saying that it is not genuine
Windows 7. Still, at least I have my
laptop back and can use it.
Peter Morffew, via emailYou can roll back a Windows 7 to 10
upgrade, if things go horribly wrongTransform your Chrome “fakebox” into
a “realbox”
Send a web page to
another deviceChrome lets you save your open tabs to
come back to later