Directive Blogs

Microsoft Office is possibly the most well-known suite of software solutions out there, with Microsoft Word probably being the first of the suite’s included programs to come to mind. We’d also wager that most people don’t know all of Word’s capabilities. This week, we’re taking a closer look at some of Word’s handiest, but relatively unknown, features.

Email is a particular favorite attack vector of many who would do wrong by your business, as it is easily one of the most used communications in most businesses today. Do your employees know how large of a responsibility they have to your business’ security just by using email? In order to prevent unfortunate security blunders, you need to make sure you and your employees know a few best practices when it comes to handling email securely.

Have you ever tried to open up a document and have your computer default to a program that you didn’t intend, or quite frankly, never use? This can often happen for common file types like PDFs. Thankfully, Windows 10 makes it easy to change the default applications for your organization’s file types. We’ll walk you through how it’s done.

The personal computer is a remarkable tool, allowing us to accomplish levels of productivity and efficiency at speeds that were once only dreamed of… at least, that’s how it feels at first. However, it doesn’t take very long for a computer to seem like it drags on and on before performing the task requested of it. Why is that, and how can this be resolved?

Smartphones are handy little devices for a lot of different reasons, not the least of which their availability when a note needs to be taken and the apps that are available for just that purpose. One of these apps, Evernote, stands a step above the rest, especially for use in a business setting. For our tip this week, we’ll go over some of the features that Evernote offers that can help out your business.

IT management is critical to the success of your business, but it’s easier said than done. There are countless moving parts that all go into keeping your business’ IT organized. Here are three ways you can make sure IT doesn’t hold your business back from its full potential.

Microsoft’s OneNote application is great for taking notes, but its functionality is much more than just that. We’ll be sharing some of our favorite tips and tricks to help you make the most of your OneNote.

Customizing your display settings is one of the best ways to make Windows 10 feel like your own experience. There are a ton of settings you can change to your specifics. This week’s tip will walk you through how you can change the settings on your displays, whether it’s a new monitor or the old one you’ve been using since the beginning.

Google is the most visited website in the world. That distinction doesn’t come easily as 4.2 billion people are active users of the Internet. Google claims to process around 3.5 billion search queries per day, or 1.2 trillion searches per year. As a result, it has become the world’s most successful advertising site, which can actually be a hindrance for users looking to get information about a subject.

Microsoft Word is a major player in modern word processing programs, and it’s largely due to the many tools and capabilities that are important for users. You can use various techniques to adjust Word so that you can get the most use out of it. This week’s tip is dedicated to these techniques.

Collaboration is a crucial business process in many ways, which means you need to be sure that your entire team is on board and prepared to participate. This week, we’re offering some tips to help you accomplish just this in six simple steps.

Collaboration is crucial in today’s work environment, which is one reason that solutions like Slack are so popular among businesses. Another reason that Slack is a popular option is how user-friendly it is - especially with the many shortcuts that are built in. We’ll go over a few of these shortcuts.

One would think that a program called System Restore would be one that would be prioritized as one to get right. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case, as utilizing one of your restore points after performing a Windows Update can cause some serious issues. For our tip, we’ll go over how to avoid these issues with a workaround.

Working in an office is the reality for a lot of people, but it doesn’t need to be an unpleasant one. There are plenty of ways to make life easier while working in an office. Here, we’ll review five simple adjustments you can make to streamline your time throughout the workday.

Unfortunately, your business’ technology doesn’t last forever. At some point in the future, you will have to upgrade away from your current hardware, which, regrettably, is not as simple as it sounds. Here are some tips to help you out during this difficult process.

Computers are great tools to get work done in the office, but only if they are used effectively. Employees looking to get more out of their Windows workstations can utilize the taskbar to get around faster. We’ll discuss some of the ways your business can take better advantage of the taskbar, as well as what it’s capable of.

If there is anything you should know about business computing it is that server maintenance is extremely important. This isn’t exactly a realization, and if it is, you need to call the number below as soon as possible. You have to know that you are not alone. You would be surprised how many business owners don’t actively have a plan for the maintenance of their business’ servers.

Microsoft Excel has a lot of moving parts… assuming you know how to move them, of course. For this week’s tip, we’re going over a few shortcuts to help you make the best use of some of these parts.

Although Android Q is on its way, Android Pie still has a lot to offer a user - a lot of which many users may not be aware of. For this week’s tip, we’ve compiled a few ways that Android Pie allows you to customize your phone to be the productivity machine you want at your side.

Every time something goes terribly wrong, and you are left assessing the damage of some seemingly unfortunate situation, you typically find that by taking a bit of time preparing for the worst would have kept you from the disaster you are just now dealing with. Those small acts are what we want to talk a little bit about today, because they can save your business.

While you are probably spending a fair amount of time thinking about your business’ security, can you confidently say the same about those that you’ve employed? Unfortunately, your workers may not put much thought into network security. This could very possibly lead to some severe issues potentially harming your business operations.

Our smartphones have become an indispensable part of our personal and professional lives. As such, we often download various media to them that we want to find again later… unfortunately, this isn’t always so easy. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over where to find those files that you have downloaded.

YouTube might seem fairly straightforward, but it’s a little less so for business use than for personal use. Here are a few features that you will need to be aware of if you want to use YouTube effectively in a business environment.

Most Internet providers will ask you to rent your modem from them, but what they don’t tell you is that you often have the opportunity to purchase your own. What are the benefits of doing so, and how can you make the best decision possible while modem shopping? We’re here to give you a hand.

Look, we get it. All you want is for the technology your business relies on to just… work. While that may not always be possible, there are quite a few things you can do to help prevent issues. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over some basics that will help make your use of your computer much less stressful.

Social media has completely changed the dynamics of how people communicate with one another. While some users might only keep in touch with friends through it, others--including businesses and brands--use it to promote their products. In an age where a picture can appear on thousands of devices all over the world, privacy has become a major concern for anyone using social media.

Microsoft Word’s massive cache of options and its relative ease of use are two of its defining characteristics. This presents organizations and users alike with a large set of different ways they can set up the word processor. Today, we will take you through Word, providing tips on how to change these settings so that you can get the most out of it.

Whenever you decide to implement something in your information technology strategy, you accept some level of risk. Understanding and managing this risk is crucial to your business’ success. For this week’s tip, we’ll review how to manage your IT risks and what your options are.

I have a question for you: when did you last examine the bandwidth that your business Internet package provides you? This is a very important consideration to make, for the sake of your productivity. This week, we’ll offer a few tips on how the proper bandwidth can help you get much more out of your IT solutions.

Anyone that has used a computer is familiar with the following scenario. A friend tells you a story about an app that is really useful or fun so you take a chance and download it. After you download and fire it up, you get a pop up asking if you want to allow notifications from that app. You blast “yes” just to get to the application and sometime later, you are asleep or working and you get a notification from the company behind the app you downloaded. Then you get another one, and another, and since you’ve blasted “yes” on 25 little pop-ups, you are getting a constant flow of notifications that you could completely do without.

Windows 10 is a great option for businesses that want to get the most out of their computers, but it can be a bit slow at times. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping you get the most out of your Windows 10 PC and speed up certain tasks.

A business’ IT solutions aren’t the kind of thing that you can worry about once and never touch again - this is why manufacturers and developers are always sending out upgrades. However, you also need to have a strategy ready before you go to implement these upgrades. For this week’s tip, we’ll review how to put this strategy together.

Even though no one will admit to it themselves, everyone knows that person that, for some reason or another, has dropped his/her smartphone in the toilet, or into the sink, or into a puddle. Needless to say that dropping electronics into any bit of water isn’t typically recommended, but today we will talk about what to do if this happens to you.

There are over two billion active devices currently using Android. Most of them that have been purchased in the past year or so have come with, or have been subsequently updated to, Android 9.0 Pie. With the introduction of their newest mobile OS, Google has ensured that their software powers more mobile phones than any other software in the world. Today, we’ll take a look at some handy tips you can use to get the most out of your Android Pie experience.

Google Chrome is the most-used browser in the world by a wide margin, which is part of the reason that it is so incredible that many people don’t know a lot about its built-in features. While we certainly can’t go through all of them in a single blog, we can offer a few tips describing the best of them.

Businesses are driven by processes. More often than not, these processes are fairly definitive - do this, then do that, then do the other thing - and require a set order of operations. There also happen to be a lot of these processes, which makes it important that they are well-documented so you and your employees can refer to this documentation later. Here, we’ll offer a few tips on how to best document a task.

A database is an incredibly useful tool for organizing a lot of information in a relatively concise and accessible way. Did you know that you can use a relatively common program, Microsoft Excel, to generate a database for your business to use? For this week’s tip, we’ll walk you through this process to help you keep your data organized.

For many businesses, communication is a major contributing factor to their success. Technology--when it’s properly implemented, anyway--can play a big part in keeping communication productive, but with certain solutions, it can be difficult to determine context. Here are some ways that you can help your employees be as clear and concise as possible with specific communication methods.

For any business to be successful, its inner workings need to be able to work together seamlessly, each with a defined role and purpose. While we usually stick to talking about how to make your IT more collaborative, we’re devoting this week’s tip to ensuring that your employees are also capable of effective collaboration while using these solutions.

Quick question for you: how many email accounts do you have? How many do you have to regularly check? How many different platforms do they utilize? If there’s too many, important communications are easy to miss in the ensuing mess of messages. Fortunately, there are a few ways that this can be avoided, which we’ll review for this week’s tip.

Virtualization has opened up a lot of doors for businesses who want to make their operations more flexible, but your business can’t simply implement it all willy-nilly. You need to have specific requirements in mind for your cloud hardware. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping you make the best decisions possible regarding the adoption of virtualization for your business’ needs.

There will never be a time that we are not committed to improving the security of businesses. To continue striving for this goal, we’re dedicating this week’s tip to describing some solutions that can assist in locking a business and its data down.

Are you a person that has traditionally written down things in notebooks? If you are, you probably have dozens of notebooks that are half filled with information, most of which you’ll look at sometime in the future and you’ll be reminded just how helpful that note would have been if you had it when you needed it. Today, digital notebooks offer the same helpfulness, with a few added features that make them (dare we say it) a little better than the traditional notepad.

You walk into the office, just like you would on any other morning, and discover that there are updates that need to finish applying before you can use your workstation. Well, that’s certainly frustrating. Sure, it’ll probably only take a few minutes to complete, but you have your coffee in hand, and you’re ready to dive into the day. How can you burn that time, without it being a total waste?

All businesses are part of their respective markets, and depending on that market, the business will implement technology solutions designed to help them best cater to their business. However, you should only implement technology that can yield a satisfactory return on investment, or ROI. We’re here to help you get the most return on your investment as possible.

Passwords are always a major pain point for businesses, but in some industries, their importance is emphasized more than others. In particular, government-based organizations need to be prepared to keep more secure passwords. While we understand that not all organizations are government-based, there’s something to be said about proper password practices that we can all learn something from.

The funny thing about some documents is how the data written on them can strongly influence how important they are. If, for instance, there were two pieces of paper on a table, there is objectively no difference between the two, and so they are objectively equivalent in value.

Windows 10 just got a second update for 2018. Some experts think this many major updates to the OS is too many, but when you start to look at the features available through this second update, you may be happy that Microsoft has decided to release it (and re-release it). Today, we’ll take a look at the new update, and a couple of the helpful features that it has rolled out to users.

Scammers find the holidays to be a wonderful time for stealing from unsuspecting victims. They know that the gift-giving season inspires others to spend a lot of money, which means that sensitive information, like credit card numbers, is up for grabs in bulk. As a consumer yourself, you’ll have to keep an eye out for these scams to make sure that you’re staying as safe as possible this holiday season.

Android devices are known for being customizable, which doesn’t always translate well to user-friendliness. However, if configured properly, these devices feature some nifty shortcuts to just about any function you might require from your device. Here are just four easy ones:

Windows 10 has a lot of features to offer a user, and more are being added all the time. We don’t want you to miss out on any, especially if they could help to streamline your business’ processes or your users’ experience. Here are four that you might find particularly handy.

Data backup tends to carry with it the association that your business could end at any moment, and while this is an important reason to implement data backup, there are countless others to consider as well. You might find that they are just as important to your organization as saving it from a devastating data loss disaster.

What are your chances of being hacked, or targeted by some kind of cyberattack? I hate to tell you this, but they’re probably a lot higher than you might think.

Depending on their work roles within your organization, your employees will either have an ordinary user account or an administrator account. This can be one of the more stressful parts of managing a network, as the answer for who gets administrator access isn’t always clear. We’ll explain what an admin account is and why it’s important to have restraint when looking at who should have an admin account.

We all have our favorite websites to visit, as well as those we often have to visit to fulfill our responsibilities. As a result, it isn’t uncommon for us to try and access the same websites on both a desktop workstation and a mobile device, but some websites work better than others while trying this. This is because of something called responsive web design, which we’ll review below for our weekly Tech Term.

There are a lot of benefits to implementing a Bring Your Own Device policy for your business. Firstly, people will be able to use the devices that they’ve purchased, and have grown accustomed to, for work. Moreover, many times they can access company information with the use of easy-to-use mobile apps, providing them with more opportunities to be productive. In fact, many organizations that install a BYOD policy see the majority of their workforce work more, which creates more opportunities for revenue growth, and ultimately, higher profitability of the endeavor.

The Windows operating system has different settings for connecting to different networks. While this may seem like a minor detail, it actually can have considerable ramifications to your cybersecurity, not to mention that of your business. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss how to use your network profile to stay secure, based on your situation.

As incredible a tool as the Internet truly is, for every website that is beneficial to the workplace, there is another that is certainly the opposite. Naturally, it is these sites that your employees would most likely want to visit if left to their own devices. Sometimes, the best course of action is to remove the temptation and block these websites. For this week’s tip, we’ll talk about a few ways to do so.

There’s a considerable difference between turning off some appliance, like a television or a vacuum cleaner, and turning off your computer. Why does the computer take so long to power down, and is there any way to speed up the process? This tip will explore these subjects, and give you a few ideas as to how to speed up the shutdown process.

Microsoft OneNote is an extremely useful application in the professional setting, with plenty of features and capabilities to assist in keeping you and your employees organized. These features are actually comprehensive enough that OneNote could feasibly serve as your project management tool. For this week’s tip, we’ll review how.

Organizations that have a workforce outside of their normal office location are presented with a unique challenge. In the case of remote employees, businesses have to figure out how to keep them connected to the workplace, productive with their time, and part of the organization’s culture. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping your organization’s remote workers become more successful--or, specifically, how you can help them be successful.

We all know how to use the Internet (you’re here now, after all), but there are a lot of hidden secrets to it that far fewer people know. Today, we’ll let you in on five of them to try and make some basics a little easier.

What would you do if you sat down at your desk one morning, coffee still kicking in, to discover a pop-up message on your computer announcing that Microsoft has detected a fatal issue with your workstation, and if they aren’t allowed to remote in and fix it, the entire network could be at risk? Would you be able to, in the heat of the moment, recognize it for the scam that it is and disregard it?

The way that business is conducted today, the right technology is more of a necessity than a privilege. There are plenty of benefits that it can bring that an organization requires in order to stay competitive. For our tip, we’ll walk through a few ways that your business can be improved through the adoption of certain solutions.

The modern worker (or really, the modern person) spends a lot of their time looking at a computer screen. Considering this, it only makes sense that their screens and the items displayed on them are arranged in a way that they like. Our tip covers a few shortcuts to help you arrange and view the items on your workstation a little quicker.

Working with your computer for so much of the day means you need to get as much productivity out of it as possible. If you can speed up some of the ways you access specific information, you can get even more done. Shortcuts are very helpful to this end. Here are some of the easiest and best ways you can save time while working with a computer.

Wouldn’t it be convenient if your business could have web pages or applications read out text for you so that you don’t have to? While most would consider this a luxury, these screen reading applications are an everyday occurrence to those who are blind, visually impaired, or have a learning disability. Even if you don’t have anyone in your office who needs screen reading, it can’t hurt to be prepared for a day when you might.

Do you remember the day that you purchased your current workstation? Maybe it was last week, last month, last year, or several years ago. At one point, it was pristine, untouched by the demands of the workday, but those days have long since passed. Over time, your computer collects all sorts of stuff on it, from unnecessary files to outdated, unused software.

Oh no! You start slapping your pockets, already knowing what you’re about to confirm--your mobile device is missing. With the reliance we have on these devices, losing yours is enough to send you into a relative panic. However, this panic may be avoided by implementing a reliable solution specifically for locating a lost device.

Providing outstanding customer service is a requirement to be successful in today’s business environment. If you ignore this valuable tenant of business, then you’ve got a competitor who will gladly jump on the opportunity to steal away your customers and prospects by offering better service. What steps is your business taking to make sure that your customer service is second to none?

When you turn on your device’s Wi-Fi capabilities, do you ever take the time to look at some of the names of your neighbors’ connections? You’ll see some rather boring names as well; some might just use the name of their organization or the family’s name, or even just the default SSID used by the router. The fact of the matter is that a wireless network name that’s easy to gloss over is a best practice for network security.

Throughout human history, cartography served as an exciting and specialized field for knowledgeable scribes. Today, the entire planet has been mapped and apps like Google Maps allow any Joe Schmo with a smartphone to have the world at their fingertips. Consequently, you can effectively be a cartographer of sorts, just by knowing how to best use Google Maps.

Security issues can have any number of causes, meaning that every business needs to have a comprehensive security solution. This doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t additional, small measures to implement that can give your organization’s security an added boost. Here, we’ll talk about two: keeping your software patched, and identifying social engineering attempts.

Managing your company’s email can be a complex endeavor, due to the sheer volume of messages being sent and received, as well as the need to have a way to prioritize which messages are important. It’s safe to say that all organizations can benefit from email management solutions, such as email archiving and spam protection, and multi-factor authentication.

An Internet connection is one of the most crucial parts of running a modern business. However, this type of reliance can be crippling in the event that the Internet goes down. What can you do to make sure that downtime is limited to a minimum?

The average employee and business owner relies on various hardware solutions to go about their day-to-day duties. These hardware devices--think keyboards, wireless mouses, external microphones, and any USB devices--utilize drivers which allow for inter-device compatibility. What happens when these drivers aren’t installed or kept up to date? Your technology suffers, and so does your productivity.

A connectivity to the cloud is a great opportunity that your organization can leverage to its advantage, but only if it’s done well. No two businesses will have the same exact configuration when it comes to cloud, as the needs and responsibilities that are accomplished through that cloud solution will change. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping you discover which cloud solution is right for you.

It’s no secret that finding a particular program or file on your computer can be a pain, especially when you don’t have the time to hunt it down by clicking through folders. However, there is a much easier way to locate your desired data. All you need to do is use the search option found in the Start menu, which is the subject of this week’s tip.

WHOOPS! This might be one of the more PG-rated things you would say if you dropped your phone, and perhaps additional colorful words would follow the moment you discovered that your phone’s screen is now cracked. If you find yourself in such a predicament, what do you do next? We’ll help you deal with this unfortunate circumstance in the best way possible.

Netflix is a great way to keep yourself entertained while on the go, but you can’t take it wherever you want. One great example of such a restriction is while you’re on a flight, where Wi-Fi isn’t permitted (or unnecessarily slow and expensive). Thanks to a couple of innovations implemented by Netflix, you can download videos for offline viewing through its mobile app.

A crucial step of setting up your business is the implementation of a physical infrastructure, including cabling and electrical lines. Unfortunately, the same setup won’t work for two very different businesses, so you’ll need to put considerable time and effort into the cabling process as a whole. Here are a few ways that you can make the process easier.

You know Microsoft Word as the great word processor that your business relies on to compose documents of all kinds. However, Microsoft Word is much more flexible and versatile than you might think. Did you know that you can perform simple calculations in your Microsoft Word document in a quick and efficient way?

In recent years, the familiar hard disk drive has slowly been losing ground to the much faster solid state drive. As they operate through very different processes, there are a few critical differences that you need to be aware of: SSDs have a limit to how many times data can be rewritten on the drive. This limit isn’t small, a standard consumer SSD drive is rated to sustain 40 gigs of data writing per day for 10 years. This may seem like a lot, but you’ll only get good results if you meet certain requirements and practices.

Fact: your PC has a limited amount of storage space. When a user runs out of space or comes close to it, they need to come up with a solution. Without taking any action, performance will lag and saving data for future projects will be impossible. By using a helpful tool like WinDirStat, you can free up space by easily identifying and then taking action with your PC’s biggest files.

Have you ever received unsolicited calls from unknown numbers? Sometimes you might receive them at incredibly inconvenient times, such as while you’re home and trying to wind down after a long day’s work. While Caller ID and voicemail have allowed users to keep unwanted calls to a minimum, there are other ways that you can block a caller entirely from reaching your smartphone.

If your employees are still working at workstations with a single monitor, you may be doing your workplace productivity a disservice. While adding a second screen to their desk may not seem like an effective efficiency booster at first, the benefits it can have are very real.

For the average PC, most of its noise comes from its fans. Computers are typically built with cooling fans that are meant to operate at acceptable noise levels. Although, as machines age, they tend to require more work out of the installed fans in order to keep the components cool, which may explain why your old machine is much louder today than when you first got it.

Have you ever come across a great soundtrack or album on YouTube that you would love to put on repeat, but can’t because YouTube doesn’t offer this feature? Well, fear not--there are a ton of services available that you can use to put your favorite videos on repeat, allowing you to save plenty of time on clicking that play button so that you can stay productive.

How many monitors do you use? How many do your employees use? If they only have one monitor to be productive with, it could be hampering their ability to work efficiently. By incorporating a second monitor you can provide the construct to overhaul your employee’s productivity and efficiency.

Here’s something that you might have noticed about opening Windows applications on your desktop; by default, they will generally open in a smaller window, giving you the ability to customize their size as you see fit. If you want a full size Window, it’s as easy as clicking on the maximize button in the top-right corner, but what if you didn’t want to go through this every time you open the app? There’s a solution for this, and we’ll help you find it.

The term ‘spyware’ has some clearly negative connotations to it, and rightly so. This variety of malicious software can cause no small amount of trouble if left unchecked. What follows is a brief overview of spyware, and what measures you can take to protect yourself and your business from it.

If you use Google Chrome as your preferred browser, you’ll notice that its performance might dip considerably at times. Thankfully, there are ways to see just what’s causing the problem, and issues can be mitigated easily enough with a little bit of knowhow.

Looking for a way to protect sensitive files on your PC? For Windows users, one easy safeguard you can take is to encrypt the files and file folders containing your sensitive information.

Have you ever gotten Facebook requests from strange people who you don’t know? While it might be tempting to give them the benefit of the doubt--after all, maybe they know a friend of yours--it’s best to keep strangers off of your page when you can. In order to give your page, the flexibility to accept friend requests from people you may know, and protect it from strangers, you can implement a “follow” feature, and limit who can send you friend requests.

Phishing attacks have been around for decades, first being recorded in 1995 where scammers would pose as AOL employees and request a user’s billing information through instant messages. Nowadays, email phishing attempts have tricked users into handing over personal information of all kinds. There are many methods of identifying a phishing attempt, but today we’ll focus on one.

It’s seems unbelievable just how much thought and effort hackers can put into their attacks. Scammers are all over the place, and you can never truly be safe. Here are six scams that you should always be on the lookout for.

If you use Google Drive as your preferred cloud provider, you know that it’s a dynamic service that offers everything from word processing to spreadsheets to file storage. However, there are many other ways to use Google Drive that you may not even be aware of. Here are three secret tips that can help you get a little more value out of Google Drive.

Have you ever gotten the feeling that your mobile device’s screen is just too small to be used effectively, despite the fact that smartphone screens are bigger than ever before? Well, there is a way to mirror your phone’s screen to a larger screen, like your PC monitor. Here’s how you can do this with your Android device.

If there’s any experience that’s universally shared by the modern worker, it’s the sensation that there aren’t enough hours in the day. Fortunately, there are some habits that can be developed that can help to mitigate these feelings by enhancing productivity. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss some of these practices to help boost your office’s time management capabilities.

Consumers can now take full advantage of a data backup system that’s both affordable and convenient, allowing them to keep their data as safe as can be in the event of a disaster. While it might not be ideal for business purposes, the average PC user can surely benefit from Google Drive’s new backup system, which takes advantage of the Backup and Sync application.