There was a time when you had to have Microsoft Office installed to create, edit, or even view a Microsoft Word document. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. There are a number of free alternatives for working with those Word documents people occasionally send you. Word Online Word Online is Microsoft’s own cloud-based solution for working with Word files. It’s part of the Microsoft Office Online suite, and you can access it without a subscription....

Whether you need to point to an image or chart for emphasis, show movement, or demonstrate a process flow, PowerPoint offers a wide range of arrow shapes. Here’s how to use them. Drawing a Basic Arrow Shape First, let’s review the steps on how to draw a basic arrow. On the “Insert” tab, click the “Shapes” button. In “Lines” group on the drop-down menu, click the “Line Arrow” option....

They say that blue spectrums of light are bad for your eyes, especially at night when you’re more likely to be looking at your phone in a dark environment. This also supposedly leads to poor sleep, which leads to poor health. Here’s how to combat that on your Android phone. RELATED: Artificial Light Is Wrecking Your Sleep, and It’s Time to Do Something About It On desktop computers, you can use an app called f....

If you watch television, browse the web, or even listen to the radio, you’ve heard them: tax preparation apps promising to help you file your taxes for free. Try to actually use those apps, however, and it doesn’t take long before they ask you for money. You might think your only option is to go along with that, but if you earned less than $66,000, there’s actually an official, truly free method: IRS Free File....

If you have large workbooks with a lot of formulas on the worksheets, recalculating the workbooks can take a long time. By default, Excel automatically recalculates all open workbooks as you change values in the worksheets. However, you can choose to recalculate only the current worksheet manually. Notice I said worksheet, not workbook. There is no direct way in Excel to manually recalculate only the current workbook, but you can manually recalculate the current worksheet within a workbook....

If you’re thinking about switching to Firefox Quantum—or at least trying to switch—Firefox makes it pretty easy. Firefox can import your bookmarks, saved passwords, browser history, and cookies directly from Google Chrome. It can also import this data from Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer, if you use those instead. Migrate Your Bookmarks, Passwords, History, and Cookies RELATED: What’s New in Firefox Quantum, the Firefox You’ve Been Waiting For Firefox normally prompts you to import data the first time you install it....

There comes a time in every parent’s life when they have to face reality: one day, your little one is going to grow, mature, and learn to drive. It’s scary. Here are some tips to help keep their eyes off their phone and on the road. When it comes down to it, keeping your kids safe from the small-screen distraction when behind the wheel is two parts communication and one part technology....

Peeking at the URL of a link that you’re about to open is a good way to make sure the URL is what you expect and not a trick. Here’s how to preview links in Safari for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. How to Preview Safari Links before Opening on Mac Popular desktop web browsers have featured URL status bars for decades. But Safari for Mac doesn’t enable one by default....

If you’re part of a WhatsApp group chat, the conversation can move fast. Set your phone down for an hour or two and you can easily come back to 100 messages. Normally this is fine, but if you’ve an important point to make or need to reply to a question from much earlier, you can’t just weigh in without confusing everyone. Enter quoting messages. When you quote a message on WhatsApp, it attaches the original message to your new one....

Although WhatsApp lacks a password for signing in to your account, it does, however, have a two-step verification to keep anyone from gaining access to your account if they steal your SIM card. Here’s how you’re able to reset that 6-digit PIN if you’ve forgotten it. Note: You must first set up the two-step verification from your setting, it isn’t automatically enabled when you initialize your account. RELATED: How to Set Up Two-Step Verification in WhatsApp...

One of Google Play Music’s strengths, aside from the verbal workout you get from its lengthy name, is that you can upload your own music, follow podcasts, and sync all of your songs and tracks across all devices. Occasionally, however, Play Music takes a while to figure out that you’ve uploaded new songs or that there are new episodes of your favorite podcasts. Here’s how to refresh your library and find your missing tracks....

It’s cool being able to add your friends on PlayStation. You can see what each other are doing, what games you’ve been playing, and even play together in some instances. Until that person isn’t someone you want to game with any longer, that is. Then it’s time to remove them. RELATED: What’s the Difference Between the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Slim, and PlayStation 4 Pro? It’s not just about getting rid of people who have wronged you in some way, of course—sometimes you just need to clean house....

It’s really annoying when you someone sends you a Snap and as you view it, you get distracted, look away and miss the message. This happens to me more often than I’d like to admit. The good news is you can replay every Snap you receive exactly once. You can only replay them straight away. As soon as you leave Snapchat, open another Snap, or do anything else in the app, you lose the chance to see them again....

Unfortunately, there’s no built-in method for saving your edited Instagram photos without posting them first. However, with this neat trick, you can add Instagram filters to your photos and save them locally to your phone without actually having to post them. RELATED: How to Use Multiple Accounts With Instagram Why Would I Want to Do This? RELATED: How to Rearrange Your Instagram Filters (and Hide the Ones You Don’t Like)...

Back at Google I/O 2017, Google announced a new feature in Google Photos called “Shared Libraries”. In a nutshell, this allows users to quickly and easily share photos with other, specific users automatically. This feature is now live—here’s everything you need to know about getting it going. What Are Shared Libraries? While we’ve already given the “feature in a sentence” look at what Shared Libraries are, there’s definitely more discussion to be had here....

Wi-Fi hasn’t completely taken over the world yet. Some hotels may offer wired Ethernet connections and spotty or unavailable Wi-Fi, for example. But you can turn that wired Ethernet connection into a Wi-Fi connection all your devices can use. In some cases, getting on an organization’s Wi-Fi can also be more of an ordeal–you may need a special Wi-Fi login. But you can sometimes just plug in an Ethernet cable and get on their network, if you have physical access....

If you’re worried about someone trying to guess your Windows password, you can have Windows temporarily block sign in attempts after a specific number of failed attempts. Assuming you haven’t set Windows up to sign you in automatically, Windows allows an unlimited number of password attempts for local user accounts at the sign in screen. While it’s handy if you can’t remember your password, it also offers other people who have physical access to your PC an unlimited number of tries to get in....

Tired of fumbling around in the dark? With iOS 14 or later on an iPhone 8 or newer, you can quickly turn on and off your flashlight with two or three taps on the back of your iPhone using a feature called Back Tap. Here’s how to set it up. How Does Back Tap Work? Back Tap is an iOS accessibility feature that detects physical finger taps on the back of your iPhone using your phone’s built-in accelerometer....

Google has done a lot in the more recent versions of Android to give users a way to customize notifications, but nothing even comes close to Oreo’s new Notification Channels. These new settings let you take notifications to a whole new level. What are Notification Channels, Anyway? In a nutshell, Notification Channels provide developers a way to group certain types of notifications together within their apps, and then let users set custom importance levels for those notification groups....

Another piece of the retro Internet is dead. AOL’s free instant messaging service, called AIM, is shutting down its servers on December 15, 2017, 20 years after it launched…and about ten years after it was last relevant. If you grew up in the United States, AIM is a nostalgic brand for you. You might want to log in one last time, but it won’t be easy: AOL has seemingly scrubbed all download links for the program from the Internet....