Tip o’ the Week #289 – Edge, Cortana & Win10 keyboard tips

Posted on July 31, 2015 by ewand

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Assuming everyone has upgraded to Windows 10 by now, it’s a useful time to post some tips that could help the new user get a leg up more quickly. So far, reaction seems to be going well – even some Mac users quite like it (though if you read to the very end, it’s not all a bed of roses) – and if, nothing else, there are some notable improvements over previous Windows versions.

I’m close to the Edge

The new Edge browser is one of the more celebrated bits of Windows 10, at least for now. It’s fast, it’s standards-compliant (and that’s something of a double-edged sword to a degree, as it means legacy plugins and old-layout web pages might not work). Even naysayers admit that Edge is a Good Thing, on the basis that it’ll put a firecracker into the Webkit bonfire, even if it’s not perfect itself.

For new upgraders, the first thing you might decide to do with Edge is to restore your favourites from IE – click on the multi-line icon on the toolbar, then the star (which represents Favourites), and click Import favourites to bring yours from IE. Some degree of username/password history will come across as well, though you may need to select the username on the first visit to a web page (as cookies are not migrated across).

To use Edge on intranet sites when attached to a corporate network, you can force the browser to try the intranet address only by adding a trailing slash to the end of the name – eg msweb/. This will stop it from trying to find that name on the internet, if for any reason it can’t get to the site internally.

If you are find sites that don’t like Edge, you can always click on the ellipsis (…) menu on the top right, and click Open in Internet Explorer, and the page will launch in IE11. Whilst you’re at it, you might want to pin the IE icon to your taskbar by right-clicking on it – then you can always go straight to IE next time.

If you’d like to change your default browser altogether, just type default web browser at the start menu, and that will let you reset to IE or another browser.

Keyboard CTRLs R US

Most of the usual keyboard shortcuts still apply in Windows 10, though there are a few changes & additions – with the removal of the Charms bar,

WindowsKey+C fires up Cortana with voice input, if you’ve already got that working (see below)
WindowsKey+S for everyone else, reduced to typing Cortana search commands or not having Cortana at all
WindowsKey+A for the Action Center – the new notifications area that appears to the right of the screen
WindowsKey+I for Settings of all sorts – very handy
WindowsKey+TAB – quick way of seeing all the running apps, across multiple desktops
WindowsKey+X still brings up the “power user” menu – a great way of getting to otherwise fairly hidden functionality like Device Manager

There have been some keyboard-related tips in recent weeks, and others regarding new apps that come with Windows 10. If you’ve not been using the preview, you might have missed them. See:

#279 – Windows 10’s multiple desktops
#280 – Telling time on Windows 10
#281 – Calculator rebooted
#286 – Windows Explorer tweaks in Win10

Hey Cortana! Oh, you’re not available…

Depending on how your upgrade has gone, Brits who run Windows 10 might find that Cortana isn’t showing up as available in the region, even though she’s supposed to be. The same might be true of other lingos – your mileage may vary.

If you’re having trouble getting old Blue Eyes to play ball and you’re in Blighty, you’ll need to make sure all your language settings are tickety-boo.

Check you’ve got the right country set in the high-level settings, but don’t stop there –make sure the language pack isn’t still searching Windows Update, and that each of the components has been downloaded.

Select the Windows display language shown, and within Options, click on Speech and clip_image005 make sure the language you speak is correct.

If you make sure that you have the correct language pack installed, and that it’s set as the speech language, then you should be allowed to enable Cortana.

If you have a microphone on your PC, then you can also switch on “Hey Cortana”, clip_image009 which will mean she’s listening out for you to say that all the time… and will jump in with a spoken response to your every query. Just make sure your Windows Phone isn’t nearby or you’ll end up cheating on one Cortana with another. Let’s wait for the Cortana vs Cortana Youtube videos.

Tip o’ the Week #286 – Windows Explorer tweaks in Win10

Posted on July 24, 2015 by ewand

Here’s a quick tip on navigating around Windows 10, courtesy of Stuart Leeks, concerning the File Explorer app (now, thanks to Internet Explorer being moved to the background in favour of the Microsoft Edge browser, maybe the name Explorer will be primarily known again as way to get to the file system).

The simplest way of getting the File Explorer running is either to click on the icon that’s pinned to the taskbar by default, or else simply press the WindowsKey+e. Out of the box, you’ll see a couple of changes to simplify File Explorer when compared to Windows 8, namely to show recent files and folders and the Quick Access pane, as the main display of the Explorer window, rather than clip_image006 just showing a list of drive letters or network locations.

If you prefer going back to seeing “My PC” as the default, click on the View menu > Options > Change folder and search options, and modify that behaviour. Quick Access is new in Windows 10, and replaces the previous Win8.x Explorer’s Favorites section.

The original feature that Stuart referred to has been found to partially exist in Windows 8.1 too, so maybe it’s a bit of a hidden gem – when in File Explorer, if you press ALT+d, the cursor & focus jumps to the address bar and you clip_image010 can start typing the name of key folders and recent files, and you’ll see the name show up in autocomplete – so to get to Downloads, just start typing down and then with a single press of the down cursor key then enter, you’ll jump straight there. This may seem trivial but to hardened keyboardistas, any reason to not use the mouse without getting too obscure, is a good one.

clip_image012 If you still like using the pointing doodah, you can click on the caret to the side of the icon that shows whatever folder you’re in (and it will change as you move around), and you’ll get a short cut menu that also includes regularly used folders.

clip_image014 Another neat one, for some at least, is that if you select a folder within Explorer, and go to the File Menu, you’ll get the option of launching a command prompt or PowerShell window with the focus directly on that folder

Tip o’ the Week #284 – Music on OneDrive

Posted on July 17, 2015 by ewand

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Did you know you can now put music on your OneDrive, and stream it to the Xbox music app on your phone, your PC, the web or even your Xbox Console?

You don’t need an Xbox Music Pass to do it, either – though in time, you may find that having both XMP and music on OneDrive is a good thing, especially if music-playing hardware that supports them both is available.

Uploading loads of uploads

The trick is to basically copy or even move all your music to your OneDrive storage – you may need to get some more of that. It can be a bit challenging doing the actual upload, though – what if you’ve got 500Gb of music ripped from your CD collection at home? Try uploading that little lot over your domestic ADSL and you might well break the internet as far as your family is concerned.

Upload speeds on a lot of broadband connections are pretty poor, you see. The A in ADSL stands for Asynchronous, meaning it’s very much not 50:50 up and down. Doing online backup and/or bulk upload of loads of files could take a looooong time, and whilst you’re maxing out the upload bit of clip_image003 the link, the download bit will be getting very constrained too – so you could see your overall network performance drop dramatically. Take a look using the Network Speed Test app (for Windows, for Windows Phone) to see the latency (otherwise known as network delay or sometimes PING time – anything into 3 figures is basically bad news), upload and download rates that are available – during heavy usage periods, it’ll seem like your network is performing poorly.

Managing music & OneDrive together

One trick to making sure your music is synced properly, is to put music folder into your OneDrive cache. If you have the OneDrive app installed on your PC, you’ll have a location that is set to sync the OneDrive storage from the cloud onto your machine. If you move your Music folder to be a subdirectory of your OneDrive location, then your PC will sync all that music up into OneDrive for you, and yet it will still show up as local choonz library for playback on your PC, if you tell it so (find Music library in Windows explorer, right-click and you can Move from there).

The downside? It might take weeks to actually copy your music to the cloud and you may not want to nail your broadband to the ground in the meantime. A solution is at hand, however – ~~take your PC into the office and use the network there~~ set up a schedule so your home machine starts OneDrive at times when nobody is using the network, and can kill it off when you might want to.

clip_image005 clip_image007 Depending on your version of Windows, the specifics may vary a little, but they generally start by looking for the Task Scheduler in control panel – something that’s existed since the very earliest days of Windows NT, though used to be a command-line only thing. Now with Task Scheduler, you can create jobs that do something on your machine according to a load of conditions – running at user logon, or at a time but only if someone’s logged in, if it’s been idle for a while etc.

It’s a snap to create a task that will start up OneDrive on a timed basis clip_image009 – just create a new task, tell it when you want it to fire (midnight, when everyone’s gone to bed, and 9am, when everyone’s left the house could be good times?) and set the action to run.

Now, rather than running the OneDrive app directly, you might want to create a little command file that can do some other goodies too – try running (WindowsKey+R) notepad %userprofile%\start.cmd to create a new start command, and paste the following into it (and save it when you’ve done that):

echo Started OneDrive %date% %time% >> %userprofile%\onedrive.log

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\OneDrive.exe

… and, while you’re at it, create a similar stop.cmd file with:

echo Stopping OneDrive %date% %time% >> %userprofile%\onedrive.log

taskkill /IM onedrive.exe 2>> %userprofile%\onedrive.log

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Now, schedule the start.cmd to run at the times you like, and stop.cmd to do the same – eg if start is midnight and 9am, maybe stop should be 7am and 6pm. Both will write a line to a log file to say what date/time they ran.

clip_image013 clip_image015 Assuming it’s running at the time, you should be able to see the OneDrive icon in the Windows taskbar, and if it’s busy uploading you’ll see just how it’s getting on by clicking on the icon.

If you find your network is taking a hammering and you need all the bandwidth you can get for a Skype call, right-click on the icon, choose Exit and then click on the Close OneDrive button. This will stop all syncing of OneDrive content until either you manually start the program again, or until the next scheduled time kicks in.

Tip o’ the Week #282 – Delay your mail

Posted on July 10, 2015 (Updated September 1, 2022) by ewand

There are several techniques to delay sending messages, something that could be considered good practice – according to Harvard Business Review, for example, bosses who send email late in the night are causing lots of stress as people feel obliged to respond immediately. A counter-argument would be that if people don’t want to respond to emails late at night, one tactic might be to not be reading them late at night in the first instance.

There may be good reasons to be emailing late on, although sometimes the sender might appreciate a delay or a sanity check – like the Google Mail Goggles idea unveiled some years ago, that would check that the sender isn’t steaming drunk when sending mail late at night. Expect the Google Beer Scooter to be along any time soon.

Sometimes, it’s easy to spot that your boss is travelling – if you suddenly get an email dump, then maybe s/he has been offline in the air or on a train, and has used the time to catch up on stuff which only gets sent when they arrive and connect. This is, of course, a good use of time that would otherwise be spent looking out of the window, watching movies on the seat-back screen and/or getting tanked up on inflight vino.

Back on terra firma, if you do need to write emails that may not need to be sent or read over a weekend or during the night, you could try Offline mode: simply go into the Send/Receive tab of the main Outlook window, and click the icon in Preferences.

Outlook being in Offline mode lets you review the emails you’ve got sitting in the Outbox, before committing to sending them, which could be handy especially if you’re bulk-sending. Alternatively, when in online mode, you, you can delay individual emails’ sending time by looking in the Options | Delay Delivery section of the actual message window.

Delay everything

Another safety valve that some people rely on is to slightly delay everything they send – a technique that lets you fish out messages from the Outbox folder in case of accidentally sending them to the wrong person, hitting send too soon, etc.

The trick is to create a rule in your mailbox (NB – if you want to follow these instructions, you may want to arrange your windows so that you can see this on a 2^nd monitor, or arrange the main Outlook window and this message side-by-side, as when you start digging around in Outlook rules, you won’t be able to flick back to this message if it’s behind the Outlook window).

In the main Outlook application window, go to Manage Rules & Alerts and click on New Rule
Select Apply rule on messages I send and then determine if you want to apply some other conditions – maybe you only want to delay emails being sent to certain groups of people or if they contain certain words; if you don’t want to restrict to a given set of conditions, just leave everything blank and hit Next – and accept the fire-and-brimstone warning message that this rule will apply to every message…
Next, set the timing you want to apply to the rule and hit OK – and when you go to save/apply the rules, you’ll get a warning that this rule will only run on this PC, which is as expected, since it’s a client-side one.
Now, be careful – outgoing messages will sit in the Outbox folder on the PC you’re using, but that’s a special folder that exists only on your current machine and isn’t synchronised with the server or anything else – so if you hit send and then immediately close the lid on your laptop, your PC might go to sleep and the email will stay in Outbox until it resumes again…
If you get cold feet on sending, or decide you need to edit your missive, just go into the Outbox folder, and if the email shows with the recipient name or address in italics, then it means it’s waiting to be sent – if you open up the mail and then just save it again, it’ll stay in the Outbox but won’t be sent until you edit it again and press the Send button again.

Finally, it’s possible to send mail in the future/from the past when you’re offline entirely. That’s a whole other topic that’s been covered 4 years ago.

Tip o’ the Week #285 – Windows 10 picking up pace

Posted on July 2, 2015 by ewand

The release of Windows 10 has started to pick up speed as it nears its planned July 29^th RTM. If your home PC isn’t running Windows 10 yet (ie. you haven’t opted in as a Windows Insider), then you can reserve your free upgrade today and you’ll get it via Windows Update when it releases in a few weeks’ time. Windows Insiders will get theirs first, and reserved upgrades will roll in waves thereafter.

The latest builds of Windows have been coming thick and fast – 10158, 10159 and 10162 have all been pushed to the “Fast” ring this week, meaning users who opt in to be a bit more on the bleeding edge and to get their builds quickly will see upgrades more frequently. “Slow” ring users may well get 10162 next week. ISO images of 10162 are available now.

This is the first time Microsoft has really done the “flighting” approach where a quality bar is set, and if the daily build meets that bar, it gets released to a wider audience. Now that we’re getting nearer the end (the deathmarch, as it’s sometimes known in software engineering), the quality of daily builds is that much better and therefore we’re seeing more frequency of upgrades.

Latest in the crop, are the new login experience with the fancy new Windows 10 wallpaper, the proper appearance of the Microsoft Edge browser, some new apps and a load more. Build 10158 also fixed a blocking issue with Surface 3 meaning it couldn’t upgrade, and the whole thing is optimized better for Surface devices. In fact, the word is that 59 and 62 builds have a load more performance improvements across the board. There are some cool new features in Cortana, and a load more – see here for one take on the top 5.

It’s going to be an exciting few weeks!

Tip o’ the Week #281 – Calculator rebooted

Posted on June 11, 2015 by ewand

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So, Windows 10 will be with us in less than 2 months. As well as many significant improvements and new experiences, there are a number of subtle clip_image003 but still cool updates. One such is the new calculator app, a “modern app” which has been enhanced compared to the old-fashioned Windows Calculator (which itself was updated in Windows 7, covered way back in ToW #90).

The new calculator app in Windows 10 functions largely the same as before, though it looks a bit groovier (with the now-standard clip_image005 “Hamburger” menu in the top left). The refresh makes it touch-friendly without being unwieldy to desktop or keyboard users, and there are a bunch of cute touches too…

If you tap on the ‘burger, you can set different modes of operation, including the conversion of weights, measures and the like. As well as giving you the answer to your conversion query, it also furnishes an equivalent estimation …

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Have a play – how many kilojoules are there in the equivalent food calories of a slice of cake? How many elephants does your car weigh?

clip_image013 The calculator doesn’t do currency conversion, but Bing.com clip_image015 does a decent job of that – just type the currency symbols or standard identifier into Bing and you’ll get an approximation. Add the quantity too if you like.

In fact, Bing also does calculations and other conversions, too – try a few for size. It’ll give you a simple calculator if you enter a sum.

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Tip o’ the Week #280 – Telling time on Windows 10

Posted on June 4, 2015 by ewand

clip_image001 For some time now, the death of the watch has been predicted, as people increasing use other devices to tell the time. The frenzy of interest around the Apple watch (even if it’s only being worn as a bit of bling) maybe shows that there’s life in the wristwatch idea yet, and whatever happens, people still need to know what time it is.

Maybe now is the era where many watches are exclusively for style and feeling, rather than for the simple utility of timekeeping. Just as celebrity petrolhead blabber Jay Leno described the automobile as the “savior of the horse” (in that horses would no longer be collectively abused as mere transport, and instead be cultivated & enjoyed as leisure), perhaps the world of horology is all about cheap and essentially disposable watches; devices like clocks, phones or computers that also tell the time; and old-fashioned mechanical watches & expensive fripperies that are primarily about “looking good” and showing off (hmmm), just like Mr Lagerfeld’s fruity phone.

Of course, as you sit at your PC, there are a number of ways to see the time – something that has been covered in the past on ToW (for Windows 7 and Windows 8). There’s a snazzy new clock application in Windows 10, that is also now worth taking a look at…

Double-click on the date/clock in the system tray and you’ll see clip_image002 the current time and a date picker that’s been redesigned to be clip_image003 touch-friendly. Clicking on Additional clocks also launches the new Alarms & Clocks application which integrates a couple of useful stopwatch & timer functions as well as a day/night view of the world map, and a configurable list of locations that you may want to keep an eye on, so you know the time at a glance.

There’s a nice “Convert” option too, where you can drag a time slider and see what the time (and condition of daylight) would be at all your listed locations; so there’s no excuse if you’re setting up calls with people from all over the globe, in choosing a time that’s inherently unsuitable. This app has the default aspect ratio of a phone app, and we can look forward to the same sort of functionality when Windows 10 lands on phones, too.

If you don’t have Windows 10 yet (check it out here), there is a simple way of finding out the current time in an overseas location, and even displaying a real-time proper clock…

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If you enter “time <place>” into Bing.com, you’ll see the current time and time zone there – in fact, lots of locations also have other details that are shown alongside, like maps, current weather, travel tips etc.

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Tip o’ the Week #278 – Skype for Business UI tips

Posted on May 29, 2015 by ewand

Skype for Business has rolled out across a good number of customers and it’s, generally-speaking, a great UI update compared to Lync. The clients’ histories were covered a few weeks ago, if you’re interested…

But there are a few differences that could catch people out. If you join a conference call, for example, it’s possible you won’t see the list of attendees, where with the old Lync client, you’d be able to quickly show them with a click of the chunky Participants button clip_image002 in the Lync meeting UI. In Skype for Business, during an IM chat or call, you’ll see there’s no equivalent participant button – there’ clip_image004 s the usual button to show the IM window, which shows the text chat section but not the participants button.

clip_image006 This has been moved to higher up in the UI – it varies depending on which kind of chat/meeting/conference you’re in. Click on the icon to the left of clip_image008 the text (hover and you’ll see the Open Participant List tooptip) and you’ll be able to view that list.

On a simple IM conversation, the same thing is true, too, only with a smaller button.

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If you look in the Settings | Tools | Options page within the Skype for Business client, under the Skype Meetings setting, you can set the default on what happens when you join a meeting.

There are some other tweaks too, such as using the view icon on the top right of the meeting window – Gallery View shows you a horizontally-arranged list of attendees’ mugshots, which can be right-clicked to interact with them. Speaker View hides clip_image016 all of that, but still shows a picture of you next to the person who’s currently speaking, and Content View hides both in favour of the presentation content that’s being shown (the “Stage”).

Tip o’ the Week #279 – Windows 10’s multiple desktops

Posted on May 22, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002 Windows 10 is developing apace. A new build (10112) arrived this week if you’re on the “Fast Ring” for getting updates (check here if you’re already on Win10 but are not sure about how quickly you’ll get updates). Sometimes, latest builds get two steps forward and one step back, though; if you want to be on the leading edge, be prepared for occasional gremlins.

If you’re not using Windows 10 yet, then check out the Windows Insider program (there are millions of participants already).

One of the nice features of Windows 10 that’s maybe less obvious than the Start Menu, the windowed Modern apps etc etc, is the ability to have multiple desktops. clip_image003 To access, just click on the the Task View icon on your taskbar – assuming you are showing that icon (if not, right-click on the task bar and enable it). Another means to access it is to press WindowsKey+TAB (remember that Flip 3D feature in Vista that nobody used outside of demos?)

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The Task View gives you a nice layout of all the running applications’ windows, so you can see what’s happening and quickly jump between them. Down in the bottom-right corner, there’s a New Desktop button… click that and you can create multiple, virtual desktops to arrange your windows on.

If you run lots of applications and want to group them appropriately, you could dock them onto each clip_image009 of the virtual desktops that appear at the bottom of the task view screen – just drag & drop the windows of your running apps.

Now, if you look in Task View, you’ll only see the windows that are docked onto the virtual desktop you have selected, though if you use the old ALT-TAB way of switching between apps, you’ll see all of them in the list, regardless of which virtual desktop they’re currently sitting on.

Keyboard shortcut junkies might want to know that WndKey+CTRL+D will create you a new desktop and jump straight to it, WndKey+CTRL+F4 will close the current desktop and move any windows that are on it, to the next desktop. Perhaps the most useful combo of all is WndKey+CTRL+LEFT or +RIGHT, which flicks between the desktops you have open – so if you’re doing work that needs you to quickly move between two apps, especially if you only have a single physical screen, then this is a great way of doing it.

Tip o’ the Week #276 – Reduce massive PowerPoint files

Posted on May 9, 2015 by ewand

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clip_image004 Windows Explorer has a search function which can filter found files, based on some attribute or other – so you return files that are only of a particular type or age, or maybe of a specific size. The problem is, the understanding of what is a big file has changed over the years.

In the days of the floppy disk, any file larger than 1Mb was a bit unwieldy. When server hard disks cost £1,000 per Gb, then file servers would impose quotas of maybe a few 10s of Mbs per user.

But now, with storage so cheap (e.g. a 4Tb hard drive is a little over £100, Azure storage is a few pennies per Gb/month, and OneDrive seemingly can’t wait to give it away) it’s easy to become blasé about very large files. clip_image006

One particular culprit in the generation of unnecessarily mahoosive files is PowerPoint. With the ease of inserting graphics and video, especially, it’s not hard to get files well into double figures of megabytes, which can be problematic to email and take ages to open. There are a few tips that can help you keep the size a little more trim.

Delete stuff you don’t need

Well, duh. Obviously, deleting stuff can make a big difference to the file size: before distributing a deck, maybe dump the hidden slides and the many appendix slides unless you feel they might be a useful reference…

It’s sometimes not as easy as ditching slides you don’t need, however – the template you’re using might have a lot of imagery that’s unnecessary in it, so it may be worth cleaning up a little.

Go into the View tab, look under Slide Master and you’ll be able to see the slide templates that define the look and the layout of new slides. It’s not uncommon to find hundreds of these, though in most cases they’re not a cause for concern – unless they have lots of images embedded.

This is particularly the case when an elaborate slide deck is produced for a conference, and people start using that template as the basis for their own presentations, because it’s got a really nice background or whatever – not realizing that the template might have 10Mb of grinning stooges holding long-obsolete mobile devices and conference logos from years gone by. If you don’t use the graphics slides, feel free to delete them from the master, then Close Master View to go back the regular deck. (Might be an idea to save a copy of the deck first, just in case you muck it up…)

Look within

The PPTX file format that has been used by PowerPoint since 2007 is part of the Open XML file formats – the idea being that instead of a proprietary binary file, the artefacts and contents within the file are described using XML according to a published format, so other applications could re-use the files. In order to achieve this and not end up with huge file bloat (XML not being well known for its brevity), the whole shebang is compressed.

What you may not know is that all of the Open XML formats use the same compression as ZIP files, and if you rename the .PPTX extension to .ZIP, you’ll be able to see inside it.

clip_image010 Navigate to your file location, and make sure can see the file extensions – go to the View tab in Explorer and tick the File name extensions box if you can’t see them. Make a copy of the PPTX file you want to work on, select it and right-click to Rename (or just press F2). Now overtype the .pptx bit at the end with .zip, and agree to the dire warning that the Earth might stop turning if you continue.

Now open the ZIP file up and look in a couple of places to see what is likely to be making it huge – ppt\media and ppt\embeddings are a couple of notable sources (the clip_image012 former when you’ve maybe got a video or just lots of high-res pictures embedded, and the latter is a common source of embedded XLS files which might be unnecessary… ie. Maybe you could get away with a simple copy of relevant data, rather than the whole file?). Maybe the best way to slim down the file is to open the un-renamed one in PowerPoint, then navigate to the place where the huge content was and resize, compress or replace it.

Compress pictures

A very simple way of cutting the size of large files without digging around in their innards might clip_image014 be just to compress pictures – you can get to that from the Format tab when you have a picture selected, and clip_image016 individually reduce the size and resolution of each image.

Alternatively, when it’s time to save your work, use Save As and under the Tools drop down in the lower right of the dialog, you can invoke the same function, but which applies clip_image018 to every image in the deck.

Choose the appropriate resolution – Screen is probably a good one for PPT, though the same picture compression functionality is also available in Word and Outlook, so if you’re pasting images into an email then resizing them, it’s an idea to compress them and you can get away with an even lower resolution there.