Managed IT Force Blog

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It doesn’t matter how good of a service your business provides or how incredible your customer service standards are if your business is lousy at ensuring that payments are received and processed properly. Invoices are an invaluable tool to help ensure your payments due are coming in efficiently. For this week’s tip, we’re examining how to leverage them better.

In case you’re looking for a nice alternative PDF file-editing software, the most recent version of Microsoft Word can do so. Since the investment for Adobe Acrobat isn’t for everyone, you can instead turn to the tried-and-true all-purpose word processing software to edit your PDF files.

When you need to put together a presentation, chances are that the solution you use is a little thing called Microsoft PowerPoint from the Office suite. It’s a great, user-friendly solution for most purposes, but are you taking advantage of it to the best of your ability? Here are some of the best ways that you can cut out unnecessary steps in PowerPoint.

Email is a crucial part of normal business operations, but while email can provide a great medium for communication, sometimes you don’t have time to respond to every single message in a sincere and meaningful way. This is where Gmail’s canned responses come in. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over how you can set up your very own canned responses so that you can cut down on wasted time during your repetitive email communications.