The Electric Wand

Weekly tips from the "Tip o' the Week" email distribution inside of Microsoft.

Tip o’ the Week #265 – Sorting pages in OneNote

As has been mentioned before on ToW, OneNote is the kind of application that lots of people really...

Author: EwanD Date: 02/13/2015

Tip o' the Week #259 – Manage your Christmas Cards in Outlook

Happy New Year! For many of us, time to chuck out trees, and pack away any and all decorations,...

Author: EwanD Date: 01/02/2015

Tip o' the Week #258 – The Network of Your Stuff

As buzzwords go, 2014 has been a big year for the “Internet of Things”, or IoT. A term coined 15...

Author: EwanD Date: 12/31/2014

Tip o’ the Week #256 – Clip Art clips off

Exactly 5 years after publishing the very first instalment (though it was internal only for a...

Author: EwanD Date: 12/24/2014

Tip o’ the Week #253 – Using Cortana in the Car

There are many cool things that Cortana can do, which make using Windows Phone 8.1 a pleasure. Try...

Author: EwanD Date: 11/28/2014

Tip o’ the Week #251 – Toasting a new email message

You got a new email – hurray! Back in the early days of using email, it was expected practice for...

Author: EwanD Date: 11/21/2014

Tip o' the Week #249 – Sync your Desktop

This week’s tip comes as a direct result of a conversation had over a glass of wine and a plate of...

Author: EwanD Date: 11/14/2014

Tip o' the Week #247 – Block the adverts in IE

Adverts. The economy of much of the web is dependent on them, as evidenced by where Google makes its...

Author: EwanD Date: 10/31/2014

IoT at Future Decoded, Excel Docklands, London–12th November

There's a 3-day conference called "Future Decoded" running at the Excel centre in...

Author: EwanD Date: 10/24/2014

Tip o’ the Week #245 – Podcasts on Windows Phone 8.1

The topic of Podcasts was raised by a Tip reader some time ago, after Windows Phone changed the way...

Author: EwanD Date: 10/21/2014

Tip o' the Week #244 – Ticking away, the time of day

“Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day” –  even if you choose not to fritter them...

Author: EwanD Date: 10/17/2014

Tip o' the Week #243 - Parliamo Glasgow?

The great Stanley Baxter had a famous series of comedy sketches looking to help Sassenachs and...

Author: EwanD Date: 10/15/2014

Tip o’ the Week #242 – File favourites and Explorer

Office365 offers a great way of hosting documents in the cloud, using SharePoint Online and OneDrive...

Author: EwanD Date: 10/10/2014

Tip o’ the Week #241 – Where did that email come from?

Most people don’t really pay much attention to where emails originate from or how they got to be in...

Author: EwanD Date: 09/19/2014

Tip o’ the Week #239 – OneNote templates

As we’ve covered on ToW before, OneNote is an application that attracts legions of fans like few...

Author: EwanD Date: 09/05/2014

Tip o’ the Week #238 – quiet hours on Windows Phone 8.1

The time of year has rolled around where many of us are travelling – maybe time for a last, late...

Author: EwanD Date: 08/29/2014

Tip o' the Week #235 - Present on Lync

Tip o’ the Week #111 covered how to present within a Lync meeting. Given that it was 2+ years ago...

Author: EwanD Date: 08/15/2014

Tip o' the Week #233 – When I'm moving windows

As the nights are already drawing in, UK domestic interest in international football has long waned...

Author: EwanD Date: 08/08/2014

Tip o' the Week #231 – Linking LinkedIn and Outlook, look!

LinkedIn has been going for over 11 years and has resurged in user base and usefulness after...

Author: EwanD Date: 07/25/2014

Tip o’ the Week #228 – Lync Q&A

Presumably, we’ve all been on a Lync conference call where there may be a presentation going on and...

Author: EwanD Date: 07/04/2014

Tip o' the Week #224 – Alarem Scarem in Windows 8.1

If you’ve installed Windows 8.1 Update 1, there are many great additions which will be ...

Author: EwanD Date: 06/06/2014

Tip o’ the Week #229 – Cortana, let’s rock!

(Another slightly out-of sequence tip as this could be more timely now than in a few weeks) One of...

Author: EwanD Date: 05/30/2014

Tip o’ the Week #220 – Wireless networking, 15 years on

It’s amazing how quickly technology goes from an expensive frippery to a cost-insignificant...

Author: EwanD Date: 05/16/2014

Tip o’ the Week #219 – OneNote takes flight

In case you missed it, OneNote had some interesting news a few months ago. The application has a...

Author: EwanD Date: 05/09/2014

Tip o’ the Week #218 – Have you got the touch?

Using “touch” in computing has evolved so much in just the last five years. First phones then...

Author: EwanD Date: 05/02/2014

Tip o' the Week #216 – Bing Smart Search in Windows 8.1

Hopefully, everyone who was on Windows 8 should be running Windows 8.1 by now. There’s so much that...

Author: EwanD Date: 04/25/2014

Tip o' the Week #223 – Clear your inbox

Some people live a disciplined existence and manage to keep a very tidy desk, their to-do list at...

Author: EwanD Date: 04/18/2014

Tip o' the Week #222 – Windows 8.1 Update 1 is here

Another in the occasionally out-of-sequence Tips: since this is quite topical, it’s jumping the...

Author: EwanD Date: 04/11/2014

“Latent Data” – the secret sauce of the Internet of Things

This is part 2 of a series of articles exploring the Internet of Things, starting with the first...

Author: EwanD Date: 03/24/2014

Tip o' the Week #212 – Filing and piling of email

The topic of filing vs piling of email has been had on ToWs passim (here & here), but this...

Author: EwanD Date: 03/21/2014

What is this “Internet of Things” thing, anyway?

I’m going to start the odd bit of blogging aside from the weekly Tips that will carry on...

Author: EwanD Date: 03/14/2014

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