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How to enable Controlled Folder Access on Windows
Ransomware is a type of malware that will secretly install itself on your computer or cell phone and proceed to encrypt almost all of your files. It will scramble all your filenames and extensions half the time. Read more…
Enable Controlled Folder Access
- Go to the Start Menu and look for Windows Defender Security Center.
- Go to Virus & threat protection, and click on Virus and threat protection settings.
- Scroll down and look for the Controlled folder access option. Switch to On
Note: When asked by Windows if you want to allow the app to make changes, click Yes.
How to use OneDrive Files On-Demand
OneDrive users can now benefit from the new Files On-Demand feature that comes with latest Windows 10 update. Before, you could either have your files online or synced to your computer. The problem with having all your data synced is the space that it takes from your computer’s hard drive. On the other hand, having all your files online means you have to use the Web interface all the time.
Files On-Demand will allow you to see all your files stored on OneDrive from your computer, using File Explorer, without having to download them first. Let’s take a look at how you can enable this feature and how it works.
Enable OneDrive Files On-Demand
- Look for the OneDrive icon on the taskbar.
- Right-Click on the icon and select Settings.
- Go to the Settings tab and look for the Files On-Demand section. Check the Save space and download files as you use option and click OK.
New File Status
After you enable Files On-Demand, you will notice that your files have one of the following icons next to them. These will let you know the status of the files.
Online-only
Files only exist online and don’t take up any space on your computer.
Locally available
The online-only file gets downloaded to your computer when you open it. A local copy will now be available all the time on your computer, even if you don’t have an internet connection.
Always available
Files with this mark will always be available on your computer.
Note: If you don’t need or want the file to be locally/always available all the time, right-click the file and select the Free up space option.
Click here to learn more.
Using Text to Columns feature in Excel
Today, we show you how to use the Text to Columns Wizard in Excel. This feature could be very useful when you need to split a piece of information into multiple columns. For example, a list of clients with the first and last names combined into one cell.
Text to Columns Wizard
- Select the list of names that you want to split into columns.
- Go to the Data menu and select Text to Columns to see Wizard screen.
- Check the Delimited option
- For our example, we are going to use the Space delimiter.
Notice how Excel splits the name into columns in the preview window.
- For this example, leave the data format as General and Destination as is. Then, click Finish.
The result is the Client’s name divided into two columns. Hope you find it useful.
How to use Google Maps offline
Download Google Maps
- Open the Google Maps app on your phone.
- Find the map area you need to download.
- If you searched for a specific place, you should see a bar with the name at the bottom. Just tap it to see more options.
Note: If you don’t have a specific place yet, you can search for the area and zoom in to find the place.
- Click Download.
- You can now choose to make the download area larger or smaller.
- After making your selection click the Download button in the lower-right corner.
Keep in mind you may need extra storage space depending on how big the map is. Fortunately, you can change the preferences and have the maps saved to an SD card. To do so, just go to Menu > Offline Areas > Settings > Storage Preferences and switch “Device” to “SD card.”
Find Downloaded Maps
- Open the Google Maps app on your phone.
- Go to Menu > Offline Maps.
Note: This area allows you to see all the maps you have saved. You can update, rename, view or delete any of the maps you see in this section.
Using Filters in Excel
Using filters in Excel is another way to manage significant amounts of data. On our previous How-To post, we went over the use of the Freeze Panes feature to work with long spreadsheets. Today, we add the use of filters to manage the data better. When you apply filters in excel, you can show only the rows that meet a given criteria while hiding the rest. That way, you can focus on just the data you need at the time.
Using our sample spreadsheet, we are going to apply filters to show only those rows where the Region is West.
Activate Filters
To activate the filters feature, follow these steps:
- Place the cursor in one of the cells of your header row. In this case, we use A1.
- Go to the Data menu and click on the Filter button.
Note: You will notice a drop-down arrow next your column titles.
Apply Filters
Now that we added the filter feature to our spreadsheet let’s filter the region by doing a click on the drop-down arrow next to the region text and uncheck all the regions except for West.
Now, all the rows with a different region are hidden. This allows you to focus on only the data you need. When using the filters feature, you can apply more than one filter to your spreadsheet. Take for example the previous image. In addition to the Region, we are going to apply a filter to the Item column to narrow our search even more.
Note: When you apply a filter to any of the columns, you will see a small filter image next to the text. That way you can tell to which columns you applied a filter.
Clear Filters
On our previous example, we applied a filter to the Items column. Now, let’s clear the filter by following these steps:
- Click the filter button next to the Item text
- Click the Clear Filter From “Item” option
The spreadsheet will go back to being filtered by Region.