“Microsoft” collection
Master your productivity with in-depth guides on the Microsoft ecosystem, including Windows operating systems and Office software. From software troubleshooting to Surface hardware reviews, these articles offer practical solutions for both professional and home environments.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →August 20, 2015
How To Fix “Information Store Cannot Be Opened” on Outlook, Windows 10 & iCloud
How To Fix “Information Store Cannot Be Opened” on Outlook 2013, Windows 10 & iCloud when trying to access iCloud calendars within Outlook.
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March 6, 2015
How To Fix Repeating Black Boxes in a Row in Microsoft Word
How to fix repeating black boxes that appear in a row on Microsoft Word. What causes them and how to stop them from happening.
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November 24, 2014
How to Fix Mac Office 2011 Crashing in Yosemite [UPDATED X3]
Recently, my version of Office for Mac (Office 2011), started crashing on my MacBook Pro. Every time I launched Word, Excel or PowerPoint, the app would crash after a few seconds with an error asking if I wanted to recover my work, reopen the Office app and send the error to Microsoft. It didn’t matter if I opened a document…
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April 25, 2014
A Simple Search Can Get You Rewards…Bing Rewards
How many times do you do an Internet search a day? Once? Ten times? Fifty? I probably am more in the higher end of this number count. With the luxury of Internet searches at our fingertips, we also have access to unlimited sources of information and entertainment. So while we essentially have a living encyclopedia at our beck and call,…
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October 28, 2013
When is a Tablet Not a Tablet? When It’s A Windows 8.1 Pro Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2
I have had my fair share of experience with a variety of tablets ranging from iPads to Samsung 10.1 tablets to a Sony and even a Blackberry Playbook. It seems that manufacturers and developers continue to tweak their interfaces and hardware specifications to hopefully be the one that "sticks" and that everyone gravitates towards. I believe, though, that each of…
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July 29, 2013
Review: Inky – An Email Client with a Refreshing New Approach to Filtering & Management
Despite all efforts by Social Media, text messaging and other communication protocols, email is not going away. And, it seems to be growing instead of shrinking. The good think is, email service providers like Google (Gmail) and Microsoft (Outlook.com) seem to be trying to keep up with the times and integrating "intelligent" features within their web-based clients. Things like smart…
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June 3, 2013
Multiple Uses Make the LG 23ET83 Touchscreen Monitor a Winner in HighTechDad’s Home
My family always seems to get excited when a new piece of technology arrives…well, at least I do. My goal has always been to see how technology can be best integrated into the family lifestyle. And then I share the experience. When I received the LG 23ET83 touchscreen monitor a few weeks ago, at first I struggled to figure out…
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April 25, 2013
How to Stop CHKDSK from Running on Every Boot Up
Recently, my Windows 7 computer started running a CHKDSK each and every time that it booted up. For those that don't know, the CHKDSK utility is a way that Windows validates the system file structure and integrity of your computer's hard drive. You can scan your hard drive with it or run it with a fix (/f) flag to correct…
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March 18, 2013
How to Remove Little Black Square Paragraph Formatting & Page Break in Microsoft Word
Recently, I received a panicked email from my step-mom wondering why a page break could not be removed from Microsoft Word. Normally, if you click on the "show paragraphs" button (¶), you can see a page break or section break. However, in this case, there was no line signifying a section break or page break when the formatting was revealed.…
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January 11, 2013
How To Disable Java in Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Internet Explorer on Mac OS or Windows to Prevent 0-Day Exploit
If you have been reading any of the Technical publications online, you will probably know that there is currently an exploit in Java that affects most internet browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer on systems that have Java installed. This is being called a zero-day or 0-day exploit which essentially means that there is a security vulnerability in…
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December 4, 2012
7 Essential Windows Hotkey Keyboard Combinations You Should Know and Use
I'm all about working efficiently when I'm on my computers whether they are Macs or PCs. And, for some reason, I simply hate having to drag my mouse over to an application or button to do something that should be quick. Luckily, both Apple and Microsoft have built in a series of hotkey commands or keyboard commands to save you…
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November 8, 2012
How To Find Where Outlook Stores Temporary Attachments – Ones that Don’t Appear in “Recent Items” in Microsoft Office
Here's the scenario. You receive an email attachment in Microsoft Outlook. You open that attachment directly from the email message, make a bunch of edits (and perhaps save them along the way) and close your Office document. Then a while later, you want to go back to that document, only to find that it does not appear in your "Recent"…
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