You might already be familiar with some date and time functions in Excel. So let’s look at essential functions for common tasks as well as more advanced functions you may not know exist. View the Current Date or Time: TODAY and NOW Probably the handiest of all date and time functions in Excel are TODAY and NOW. TODAY provides the current date and NOW provides the current date and time....
It can be overwhelming! But, we’ve picked out some of the best tech deals for you this Prime Day. Keep reading on to see some of the best deals for smart home products, digital storage, TVs and streaming, and plenty more! Want an even more curated list of deals? Keep an eye on our news feed for our favorite sales, and subscribe to the How-To Geek Deals Newsletter for deals delivered directly to your inbox year-round....
Some apps can only be found on Apple’s storefront, which makes it all the more frustrating when the App Store is not working on your Mac, and it’s not clear why. Here are some fixes you can try to get the Mac App Store working again. Force Quit the Mac App Store Sometimes quitting an app isn’t enough. macOS tends to hang around and wait for the app to finish up what it’s doing (like saving a document) before it will quit....
A lot of smarthome devices require an internet connection for advanced functionalities to work correctly, but does that internet connection need to be super fast? Here’s what you need to know. A Quick Primer on Internet Speed We measure internet speed in megabits per second (Mbps), so when you’re shopping around for an internet provider or performing a speed test of your internet connection, it’s all measured in Mbps—the higher that number, the faster the internet speed is....
No, Don’t Run Antivirus Scans on Your TV Let’s get right to it: No, we don’t recommend running an antivirus scan on your smart TV. If Samsung thinks you should manually run antivirus scans on its smart TVs to stay secure, that’s a good argument for not purchasing a Samsung TV. Or, if you do have a Samsung TV, that’s a good argument for disconnecting your Samsung TV from the Wi-Fi and using a streaming device like a Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, or Chromecast....
PC Gaming: An Embarrassment of Riches There are several PC gaming subscription services. Some offer all-you-can download buffets, while others are streaming services for which you don’t even need a gaming PC. In this article, we’re looking only at the former. Currently, this list includes EA Origin Access, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass for PC, and Ubisoft’s UPlay Plus which rolls out in September 2019. We’re not including Nvidia’s GeForce Now or the upcoming Google Stadia....
First up: Google Maps is getting Incognito Mode soon. Google says it will start rolling out on Android later this month, with support for iPhone and iPad coming soon. Just like using Incognito Mode in YouTube, you can search for locations in Google Maps and view them without those locations being added to your history. They won’t be used to personalize your experience. When this feature arrives, you’ll be able to tap your profile photo and then turn Incognito Mode on....
This was Microsoft’s worst kept secret, as almost everyone seems to have heard that company was going to launch the multiplayer portion of its next massive game on November 15, 2021. Forbes did an exhaustive dive into all of the evidence, and it was compelling. And, of course, it all turned out to be correct. You can currently download the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta on Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Series X, and PC....
When large-scale flash storage first came to the consumer market as an alternative to conventional hard drives, the biggest concern (aside from price) was longevity. Tech fans had a pretty good idea of the general reliability of hard drives, but SSDs were still something of a wild card. But years later, the market for SSDs has matured considerably, and we’ve got a lot more data on…well, data. The good news is that SSDs are probably much more reliable than you think, and certainly at least as good as hard drives in terms of data retention and failure rates....
When you’re building a slideshow, you may know that you want to use images but don’t have them yet or don’t have them handy. In Google Slides, you can insert placeholders to reserve the spots for those images. Create a Slide With Image Placeholders Whether you’re creating a custom template for your presentation or simply want a slide or two for images, the placeholders are ideal. With your presentation open, click View > Theme Builder from the menu....
Despite the rise of tools like Slack, email isn’t going away, and it can sometimes feel overwhelming. One way to get your email under control is to have Outlook automatically sort incoming messages to specific folders. To do this, we’re going to use Outlook rules. These operate automatically when you send or receive email and perform tasks you’ve chosen ahead of time. RELATED: How to Better Manage Email in Outlook with Quick Steps and Rules...
Highlight the text you want to copy. Right-click on the highlighted text and click “Copy” (or hit Ctrl+C). In the field where you want to paste it, right-click and select “Paste” (or use Ctrl+V). How to Copy Text First, open up a document or webpage and highlight the text you’d like to copy. Right-click the selection—either with two fingers on a trackpad, with a mouse, or by pressing Alt while clicking—and then click “Copy....
Should you want to eliminate all email notifications you receive from Google Alerts, you can set them up as an RSS feed and bundle them in one place. Here’s how to send your alerts directly to your feed. You can already find and create an RSS feed for any website, but Google Alerts lets you send anything directly to a feed you already use. After you set up alerts as an RSS feed, you’ll no longer receive email notifications for that specific alert from Google....
There’s a lot of great content in the Apple TV app, and Apple wants to help you discover it by offering notifications for new content. If you find this less than helpful, iOS lets you modify (or disable) these notifications. A lot of TV notifications you receive aren’t even for content you’ll be able to watch. Often, the TV app will remind you a new season of a popular show is starting, and when you tap on it, it offers to help you sign up for a subscription to watch the show!...
Some newer Sony TVs have a built-in feature Sony calls “Motionflow,” which is Sony’s implementation of motion smoothing, and can make your TV’s image too smooth. What Is Motionflow Anyway? Motionflow works by increasing the framerate of the content you’re watching. The refresh rate on your display (usually 60hz or 120hz) is often much higher than the framerate of movies or TV (usually 24fps or 30fps). So by bumping the framerate up, it makes the most out of your TV’s high refresh rate....
When you click a PDF link in most browsers, the browser opens the PDF preview in a web browser window. To download a PDF and not preview it, you need to change a setting in your browser. This works in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Get Chrome to Download Instead of Preview a PDF Google Chrome uses its built-in PDF viewer to let you preview PDFs. You can turn this PDF viewer off, and Chrome will then prompt you to save your PDFs rather than preview them....
As great as Google Maps is, it’s not infallible. New places and roads are popping up all the time, and sometimes they get overlooked. You can help Google Maps and the community by drawing missing roads yourself. Just like adding a missing place, anyone can draw missing roads on the map, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be accepted. Google will verify that your addition is correct before making it public....
When entering numbers into Excel, zeros at the beginning of the number are removed. This can be an issue when entering phone numbers and IDs. In this article, we will cover ways to solve this problem and keep the leading zeros. Keep the Leading Zero as you Type If you wanted to ensure that the leading zero is kept when typing, enter a single quote before you type the number....
In iOS 11, your iPhone gives you much more control over notifications. You can designate certain apps as “sensitive”, so that it hides the content of notifications while your phone is locked, only letting you see the full preview when you use Touch ID or Face ID to unlock your iPhone. This works in every single app on your phone, unlike in iOS 10 and before. Previously, only Mail and Messages allowed for this—third party apps had to build in their own similar features if you wanted to hide the notification content from the lock screen....
The wired Xbox 360 controller is USB, so using it for PC gaming is easy–but things get a bit more complex if you have a wireless controller. Let’s take a look at how you can enjoy wireless gameplay on your PC while minimizing the headaches. The Three Prong Path to Wireless Freedom When it comes to wireless Xbox 360 on Windows you have three options: the expensive and easy way, the cheap and somewhat frustrating way, and the grey market middle ground....
