Tip o’ the Week 308 – Home WiFi tuning

Posted on December 22, 2015 by ewand

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom recently gave out some warnings about how poor home WiFi could be responsible for users thinking their home internet speeds were bad; a seasonal twist even said it might be your fairy lamps that are causing your network to go south. They also launched an app to help check your WiFi quality, though predictably it’s only available for mainstream devices. Don’t worry, Windows users – it doesn’t do a lot anyway. No great loss.

The Ofcom app is actually developed by Samknows, a very useful website which might help you sort out issues with your line speed more than your WiFi – UK ADSL users can search for the telephone exchange you’re connected to, and see what services are offered – here’s an example – and you’ll see if there are LLU options that maybe would give you better/faster service than the default BT package.

The gist of the Ofcom advice is that other stuff in your house might be nuking your WiFi, so don’t go blaming rubbish performance on your network provider. That’s quite sensible, to a point – there are lots of domestic devices that might interfere with WiFi, though if you see poor conditions when wired in, it’s a different matter.

In the early days of WiFi networks, there’s a story of one company which was flummoxed by the fact that their network kept blowing up at certain times of the day, until they realised the next door company had a kitchen with a couple of microwave ovens for staff to heat their lunch, on the other side of the party wall… Here’s why.

Doctor, Doctor

First thing’s first, if you think you have a problem – check the health of your network connection. ToW #199 gave some ideas a couple of years ago, that still hold true – try the WinMTR tool, and the advice for using Resource Monitor to see what’s using your network in particular. ~~SkyDrive Pro~~ OneDrive can be a hog these days, especially if it’s uploading a lot of stuff: you might see speed tests where the “ping” is measured nearly in seconds rather than ms, and the download speed will be a fraction of the norm (as the connection is being swamped by uploads).

Windows 10 users can download the excellent Network Speed Test app to get an idea. Try running it on a wired connection if you can, thereby ruling out WiFi as the cause of any gremlins at first. Move your laptop around and try on WiFi – you’ll see a table of the previous results for comparison.

Other speed testing tools are available. Lots of them.

Dude, it’s your neighbo(u)rs

Fact is, though, the guy next door is probably your biggest enemy for home WiFi. If you live in a built-up area with lots of people using networks called NETGEAR3415 or similar, this may tell you that:

They never bothered to change the default network name. That’s not very good. Have some fun instead?
They probably haven’t changed their default router password either. That’s very, very bad.
They almost certainly left the router on its default channel, and that could mean it’s overlapping with yours.

It’s quite easy to get paranoid about home network setup & security (see here, for example) but a few golden rules should be applied – give it a name that neither ties it to your name or address, nor makes it obvious how to break into it. DEFINITELY change the default password, and ideally, the name of the admin account used to configure the router. Modern routers might be able to find a suitable WiFi channel to put themselves on, but the kind of junk you might have got from your company IT department or from your ISP, might not.

The radio spectrum used by WiFi networks is subdivided into 11 or 13/14 channels (depending on where you live) and making sure your router is on the channel that’s furthest apart from the other routers that are physically closest to it, will give you a better chance of avoiding interference from the neighbours.

Channel your strengths

There are tools to scan your network and show you what channels are available – this might then help you set your own router to occupy an appropriate position in the spectrum that’s a bit more in the clear – your results may vary and experimentation (even at different days/times) may be required. Some internet folklore says you should use a channel either slap in the middle or at either end of the range – eg 1, 6 or 11/13.

Ideally, you’d like to see all the nearby networks, and by looking at their signal strength and channel, set your router to use the channel that has the weakest network(s) on it already (or preferably, none at all).

WiFi Analyser – neat Windows 10 app that displays the basics visually and as a list
NirSoft WiFiInfoView – pretty sparse but gives you text info and if you know what you’re doing may be all you need
MetaGeek inSSIDer 3.1.2.1 – free – nice tool that gives you a visual graph of what’s around you and lets you drill into a bit more detail
MetaGeek inSSIDer v4 – more polished and functional upgrade to the previously-free version, now $20

Run up the tool of your choice, see where your neighbours are, run your speed test app a couple of times, switch the channel of your WiFi and repeat the test.

You might not notice any real difference, but it gives you something to do, doesn’t it?

Tip o’ the Week 307 – Skype Meeting Broadcasting

Posted on December 17, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002 It’s been a busy time for the Skype team at Microsoft. At the Convergence EMEA conference, it was recently announced that Office365 had a new SKU: Office365 Enterprise E5.

There are a few headline new things in the E5 package – but for Skype users, maybe the most significant are the Cloud PBX and PSTN Calling capabilities; these basically allow smaller businesses to use Office365 as their phone system, by using an on-premises gateway or eventually by having a cloud-provided service that functions as the phone system (the Private Branch eXchange). Here’s a pretty useful summaries of what’s new.

clip_image003 The E1, E3 and E5 SKUs all get a new Skype for Business capability which enables users to do online meetings with up to 10,000 participants: Skype Meeting Broadcast.

You can produce and broadcast online events live to thousands of participants, using a high quality video stream to any device running any operating system without the need for plugins or downloads. It can be used for internal All Hands meetings, as well as streaming broadcast events to external customers.

Other points of interest include:

Participants can join from anywhere, on any device; all they need is an internet connection and the link to the broadcast. Event organisers can restrict entry to only a named list, anyone from your company, or anyone who has the join link. Skype Meeting Broadcast is supported to accommodate up to 10,000 ‘live’ attendees.
If get delayed and miss the beginning of a meeting: no problem. Simply join the broadcast and rewind to start watching the event from the beginning. You can also take a break without missing a beat by pausing and restarting when you’re ready.
Skype Meeting Broadcast limits the real-time audio and video to presenters only, but your audience can join ‘live’ conversations using plugins like a Yammer feed and a Question Answer Manager or provide real-time feedback using Bing Pulse. So, no heavy breathing / dog barking / furious typing from the attendees to distract each other.
With familiar Skype controls, it’s easy to switch between video and content and spotlight presenters like a professional producer. Once the event is over, you can publish the recording to your preferred location, plus pull in-depth event metrics and create insightful reporting.

To learn more about Skype Meeting Broadcast, check out the Office.com site

Tip o’ the Week 306 – Remote Desktop at home

Posted on December 11, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002 “A computer on every desk and in every home”; sounds like a good idea, right?
It’s quite unusual to have such clarity of purpose in any corporate mission statement today, let alone in something so radical at the time it was written. 40 years ago, it must have seemed like crazy talk. Nowadays, every desk has had a computer (and use of many computers has outlived their desks), and nearly every home has one – in fact, nearly every room in some homes has at least one.

If you have a proliferation of PCs then you might have a need to make stuff that happens on one be accessible from the other(s). What if you could sit on the sofa (post turkey-fest?) and connect to the others? Use your phone or your tablet to control a corporate laptop that’s Direct Access-connected back to base, refreshing a financial report or some such?

If you’ve a Professional or Enterprise version of Windows (like a corporate Windows 10 laptop), then you’ll have the ability to connect to your machine using the built-in Remote Desktop function, a technology rooted in the Terminal Services feature that first appeared in Windows Server back in the late 1990s.

Checking Remote Desktop is available and switched on

Firstly, have a look in the System application (press WindowsKey+X then choose System from there, or press WindowsKey+ Pause|Break if you have a full-size keyboard). clip_image006 You’ll see if you’re running Pro or Enterprise version of Windows, and you’ll also have the link to Remote settings – have a look in there, and you will hopefully see the Remote Desktop section. Make sure it’s enabled and that you’ve selected the right users to be allowed to connect. Whilst you have that dialogue open, click on the Computer Name tab and make a note of what your machine is called – you’ll need that in a sec. You might even want to rename your machine to something more memorable while you’re there…

If you don’t have the Remote Desktop section available, there are other options– see later in the tip.

clip_image008 Now, from another Windows machine, you should be able to connect to your PC – type Remote at the start menu to see the Remote Desktop Connection app – or just press WindowsKey+R and enter mstsc to launch the same thing (the executable is named after Microsoft Terminal Server connection, before the technology was renamed Remote Desktop Servicess).

clip_image010 If you have multiple machines you might want to connect to, then mstsc /v <name> will jump straight to each one, and the Most Recently Used list for the Run command will offer you previous-used entries. This can be a handy way of remembering the names for the machines you might use regularly, so isn’t as counter-intuitive as you might think.

If you just open the mstsc app on its own and click Show Options then you’ll be able to tweak the settings such as quality of display, whether you want to run full screen or in a window, or even use multi-monitors where available. When you’re happy with the settings for each machine, you could save them out as a separate .RDP file, and you can launch the session in future by opening that file directly.

There’s a Remote Desktop Windows 10 modern app too – here – which is touch-friendly and also keeps a handy list of previously-accessed machines, though it doesn’t offer quite the same level of control of the user experience as its desktop counterpart described above. Some users of the modern app use it to run regular x86 Windows applications on their Surface RT.

Microsoft also publishes Remote Desktop client apps for Android, iOS, Mac and Windows Phone.

Firewall check

If you see Remote Desktop switched on as above, but you can’t connect to the machine from your other client, there are a number of obvious things to check (Are you connected to the same network? Have you got the name right? etc) but there are a couple of Windows clip_image012 Firewall related things that might trip you up.

It’s worth checking that the PC you’re looking to connect to thinks it’s on a home network, not a public one – have a look in the Network and Sharing Center clip_image014 old-fashioned Control Panel applet, and make sure your PC thinks it’s connected to a Private network. If you need to change from Public to Private, launch the HomeGroup control panel applet, and you can switch from there.

Even if you think everything should be tickety-boo but you still can’t access the remote machine, double-check clip_image016 that the appropriate Firewall Rules are enabled – go into the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security control panel app, and under Inbound Rules, make sure the rules beginning Remote Desktop… are all enabled (showing a little green tick).

Remote desktop to a home PC

If your home PC isn’t running Pro or Enterprise versions of Windows then there are still options to allow you to remotely control it – a load of third party software purports to do this, though like any freeware you find on the internet, be careful… when running the setup process, make sure you’re not installing any other guff you don’t need, and maybe even think about removing the software as soon as you’ve used it, if you don’t anticipate needing it regularly.

The most recommended options include LogMeIn and TeamViewer, the latter of which is free for home use and has many client apps, including a touch-friendly modern app.

Another warning, though: the fact that TeamViewer is free means it’s also the favoured tool of the shysters calling people up and claiming to be from Microsoft, so they can access the hapless user’s computer. Make sure if you do install it, you’re getting it directly from the official source, and that you it’s as locked-down as you can make it.

Tip o’ the Week 303 – Windows 10 UI tips

Posted on December 4, 2015 by ewand

Windows 10 is, in some ways, the least WIMPy version of Windows to date. If you’re not familiar with that term, it once stood for Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer, in other words the same thing as a gooey.

Why so? Well, it’s got touch baked in for one, and that means the whole pointer bit is less relevant. And although windows (with a small “w”) are still there, even more so than in Windows 8, icons and menus might also be a bit different too.

That said, there are some good ol’ fashioned UI features in Windows 10 that might not be obvious to some users.

Minimising everything – easily done; just press WindowsKey+D like in previous versions of Windows. Only works if you’re not in Tablet Mode, too. There’s another way, too, that was also present in Windows 8, but it’s even more relevant into Win10 – if you’re not in tablet mode, and click (or touch & hold) on the title bar of an open window then shake it from side-to-side using mouse or finger, it will minimise everything else except that window. Repeat the process on the same window to reverse the effect and restore everything else.

Jump to settings by pressing WindowsKey+I – especially handy if/when your PC decides not to show you search results like “windows update”. Launch settings (the new control panel) instead and try from there.

Task Bar icons can be activated quickly – either programs that are pinned there, or just apps that are running. Press WindowsKey+number, where number is the index of the icon along the menu, eg 4 would be Groove (and it’s already running, as indicated by the line beneath), while 3 would launch OneNote (which isn’t already running).

Power User menu – another hangover from Windows 8 but still a lot of people don’t know about it – press WindowsKey+X to launch the pop-up menu from the bottom-left (as shown >>). Especially handy if you need to launch an elevated (ie Admin level) command prompt, though you could do the same by pressing WindowsKey, typing CMD then CTRL+SHIFT. It’s horses for courses.

Notifications / Action Center – to jump to the new notifications menu (or Action Center), press WindowsKey + A. Nothing more to see here, really. Move along.

Move Windows around – press WindowsKey and use the arrow keys to move your current window around. Press the SHIFT key as well to flick it between monitors if you have more than one. Simple.

Tip o’ the Week 302 – Bing Maps Preview

Posted on November 27, 2015 by ewand

Bing Maps has had a bit of a refresh recently, with a new look and some tweaks to functionality & feel. The quickest way to get to the site is to type bingmaps into your browser’s address bar then press CTRL+ENTER, to add the www and the .com bit to either end, and be redirected to the maps URL.

If you end up looking at the old Bing Maps, then try replacing the /maps/… bit of the URL with /mapspreview, or just click the Try the new Bing Maps banner.

Sometimes, however, old things are cooler than new things. There are some missing features: maybe that’s part of being in “Preview”. There’s an intro video that’s shown to introduce what’s new in the Preview. Check it out here.

The old Bing Maps featured lots of layouts of facilities such as shopping malls and museums when you click on the outline of the building (along with a directory on the side – compare the view on the right with the Preview below – not quite so nice, unfortunately).

Still, there are plenty of other things that are better in the Preview, and there’s always an opportunity to provide feedback (link at the bottom right), and ask for any missing features to be restored.

You can switch back to the old format by clicking the Leave Preview button on the lower right if need be, and provide an explanation of why you’re bailing out.

The most visible difference is the change to the way search results are displayed – you get a history of different searches you’ve carried out, colour coded and stacked up on the left, while the information panel below the current result set is used for displaying all sorts of search info – on searching for a location or clicking a point on the map, context-sensitive info is displayed on the side, with details from Wikipedia, reviews from the likes of TripAdvisor and Yelp, and in the case of a tube or train station, times are displayed.

Navigation between different types of maps has changed, with a drop-down on the top right, now including Ordnance Survey maps view if you’re in the UK (or you go to the UK version). For Hallowe’en, you can Spookify your maps should you wish, and there may be other map variants to come.

The A-Z style London Street view has vanished from the UK variant too (maybe in the realisation that the old format just isn’t as easy to read as most smartphones maps), as has the ability to see the layout of the tube network by clicking on a station to see the familiar colour-coded lines superimposed on the real map. If you still want to see that kind of view, check out Here.com mapping and click on Transit to show the layout of train lines etc.

The Streetside service isn’t universally available – in the UK, major cities are covered pretty well but don’t go looking out in the sticks. Try right-clicking a point on the map and if Streetside is present, you’ll be able to select it from the context menu and see a quick preview without moving away from the current map view. Useful if you fancy a refreshment and yet your watering hole of choice is tucked away somewhat.

Shplendid.

Tip o’ the Week 304 – Xbox One goes to 10

Posted on November 20, 2015 by ewand

When the Xbox One console was released in November 2013, it marked a change in architecture compared to its wildly successful predecessor, moving away from a PowerPC processor and essentially a bespoke operating system, to instead using an AMD-powered but Intel-compatible architecture and the core elements of its operating environment running on a version of Windows 8. Although this was unnoticed by the majority of users – except that their old Xbox 360 games and peripherals didn’t work on the new console – it aimed to help developers build software to run on the console more easily.

Now, this week sees the general release of the “New Xbox One Experience” – aka NXOE – which delivers a load of new and changed functionality to the Xbox One, largely underpinned by a shift of the underlying OS to a version of Windows 10. This should mean that by the end of the year, you’ll be able to run the same OK – albeit different flavours – on your phone, tablet, laptop/desktop and home console/TV.

See more a few videos of NXOE, here.

The big news for most Xbox fans, though, is that the NXOE also brings with it an ability to run selected Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One console – the intial list of 104 titles spans a variety of game genres with both Arcade games and full paid-for titles, with a promise of more to come in future.

So, if you didn’t pre-order COD: Black Ops III and therefore didn’t get the Nuketown bonus map, you might be able to play it on the original Black Ops, in a while.. Or you could do it for real…

Check your Xbox One this weekend – if you haven’t already taken part in the preview program – and you may be able to grab the update and start playing with the new console layout, and maybe dust down some of your old 360 games to see if you still have the magic, or you’ve lost it.

Tip o’ the Week 305 – Windows 10 “Fall Update”

Posted on November 19, 2015 by ewand

The first major update to Windows 10 – known variously as the November Update, Threshold 2 (TH2) or the Fall Update – is now making its way out to users via Windows Update. The update brings new features , bug fixes and some under-the-covers management functionality to enjoy.

Any Brits who grind their teeth over the use of “fall” (now a North American term, where the rest of the English-speaking world still refers to the season as Autumn) might want to know that in the 17^th century, the season was known in Britain as “fall”, but only became “autumn” through the Latin/French influences after the American colony had been established. So there.

If you’re patient, you should be offered the update via Windows Update (if a home / non-domain-joined PC), though if your Windows 10 PC is run by your company, there may be a managed deployment of the upgrade.

If you’re less patient, and you’re not using Windows 10 Enterprise, then you can force the update by re-running Windows Setup – it’s a bit of a palaver as you’re essentially running a full re-install of Windows over the top of your existing setup, although all your settings, files, applications etc will be maintained. If running from home, best allow a couple of hours.

Go to the Get Windows 10 page, click on Upgrade now and go through the wizard just as if you’re upgrading from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, even if you’re already running Windows 10. This process uses the most up to date version of Windows 10 – the November update, included – to run the setup and to upgrade whatever you’re running already.

There are lots of new features in the November Update, such as a “Find my Device” function in Settings -> Update & Security. There are other improvements to Cortana, Tablet mode, Edge, and Skype. More fodder for another tip or two.

The November update brings Windows 10 to version 1511 build 10586 (where, according to Paul Thurrott, 1511 denotes the year & month of the major release). If you’re not sure which version of Windows you’re running, try typing ver at the Start menu, and choose the “See if you have …” option – or visit Settings | System | About to see the current version & build.

Only after the November update will you see the “Version” & “OS Build” details appear. This should be an indicator of the pace of major updates – if “Threshold” (aka Windows 10 RTM) was effectively version 1507 build 10240, and TH2 is 1511, then who knows when RS1 (or “Redstone 1”?) will arrive?

Another quick way of getting the same kind of info is to run winver at the Start menu.

Or try msinfo32 if you want an old-school look at your PC’s software and hardware config.

Tip o’ the Week 300 – Xbox Streaming to PC

Posted on October 30, 2015 (Updated June 30, 2023) by ewand

So,ToW reaches its 300^th weekly missive. In the first weeks and months following the inaugural ToW, Avatar was in the cinema, the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai, the Deepwater Horizon was busily belching oil into the Gulf and that unpronounceable volcano was disrupting air traffic all over Europe. How Time flies.

If you have an Xbox One and at least one Windows 10 PC, here’s a tip that seasoned gamers will doubtless be aware of, but many more casual users may not. Did you know you can stream whatever is happening on the Xbox, to your Windows 10 PC?

With an Xbox controller plugged in to your PC and the Xbox app open, you can play the game that’s running on the console, with only the video and audio streamed across your home network to the Windows 10 machine. If you have the Xbox in the living room but don’t use it for watching TV, this opens up the scenario that the latest Halo/CoD/Forza campaign could be running on the box and being sent to a laptop in one room, while the big screen in the lounge is tuned to brain-park guff like Eastenders/Corrie/Strictly etc.

Start the Xbox app on your Windows 10 PC and look for the Console icon (left), and you’ll be able to see consoles on your network. After you’ve registered the one you wish to control, youcan remotely switch it on in future too, assuming it’s reachable on the network and configured so.

After firing the console up and/or connecting to it, you’ll be able to do a number of things, like use your PC as a media remote or mimic the Xbox controller with your mouse/touch, but given the scenario we’re interested in, let’s try testing the network for size.

If you run the Test streaming option, the bandwidth between the console and your active machine will be measured, and you’ll get a quick assessment of what quality level you can support – “Very high” is probably only suitable if you’re on a wired connection, and at one stage was only available through tweaking – though it’s now visible to all. The Very high setting sends 1080p video at a decent frame rate, so apart from the odd network judder that might crop up, it’s essentially indistinguishable from using the console directly. Just click Streamto get going.

Another use is that if you have the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner, you could stream live TV to a PC anywhere within range – so it’s possible to be watching one channel on the computer while the TV is currently in use, or you could watch TV in another room without needing the lounge screen to be on.

Once the streaming has started, if you move your mouse or finger to the top of the Xbox app window to display the in-app menu, you can change the quality of the experience, by clicking on the icon on the top right. The multi-line icon to the left of that will show you real-time streaming data in the bottom left of the screen, so you can monitor the performance of the network and make sure you’ve got the right level of quality.

If you’ve never streamed your Xbox to your PC, then give it a try this weekend and you may find a neat way of being allowed to use your console more often…

Tip o’ the Week 301 – Juggling Time Zones

Posted on October 23, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002 This weekend sees most of Europe moving from summer time (or Daylight Saving Time), and promises to cause confusion in some systems until everything settles down, and other parts of the world, who also use DST, have switched to winter time (in fact, most of the world doesn’t, though western Europe and most of North America does). Most of the US leaves summer time/DST on 1^st November – to see more details of time zones and the dates when DST will come into effect, see here.

Most connected systems these days can figure out when the times are right to switch, but in practice, bugs can creep in and will often only get discovered when the time zone change actually takes place. One year, every Blackberry user was turning up to meetings an hour early, as the DST switch happened a week earlier than the devices expected. Since it took longer than a week to address the software issue, the problem had gone away by the time the bug was fixed.

If you’re dealing with people in other time zones, there are more tools than ever to keep you abreast of the changes – some of this has been covered before on previous ToWs (280, 244, 120, 26…) but here’s a refresher.

clip_image004 Outlook – whenever an appointment is created, its date and time are recorded as an offset from UTC, and the time zone it’s due to take place in is also noted. If you’re creating meetings or appointments which are in a different time zone, like travel times, then it may be worth clip_image006 telling Outlook by clicking the Time Zone icon in the ribbon, and then selecting the appropriate TZ – especially useful if you’re crossing between time zones and don’t want to run the risk of horological befuddlement.

clip_image008 If you’re booking a load of appointments in another time zone – eg. you’re working in another country for a few days and creating appointments with people in that locale – then it’s even worth switching the TZ of your PC whilst you do the diary-work, to save a lot of clicking around in setting the appropriate time zone specific to each meeting.

The best way to do this would be to show your second time zone in the Outlook calendar – in the main Outlook window, go to File | Options | Calendar and select the second one to show; when you’re ready to switch between your local TZ and the remote one, just click the Swap Time Zones button to switch the PC (and Outlook) between the different zones.

Windows 10 – As featured in ToW 280 (though it was then in preview), there’s a nice new Alarms & Clock universal Windows 10 app, that shows a map of the world with your choice of locations, and the moving daylight line so you can see what’s happening around the globe. A nice alternative to that exec boardroom display nonsense, that you might expect to see gracing the wall of a Sugar (rabbit…) or a Trump (China…?).

clip_image009

Now all you need to do is deal with effects of travelling through the time zones yourself…

app o’ the week

VLC for Windows Store – free

If you’re wondering how to play back DVD discs on Windows 10 (since the native playback inherent with Windows Media Center has gone the way of the dodo, much like that niche but much-loved feature), or you have some videos in unsupported formats, such as the one used by Media Center to record off the telly, then you might want to try VLC.

clip_image013

There are a few “experimental” features, meaning the app can be a touch flaky, and it much prefers playback of local media to networked stuff (depending on the format). But, it’s the most widely-used open source cross-platform playback app, it’s been refreshed with a Windows 10 UI and is free. So what’s the catch?

Tip o’ the Week #298 – Searching and finding

Posted on October 16, 2015 by ewand

Who keeps an up-to-date browser favourites list these days? Most people seem to find web sites by Binging/Googling (other search engines are available(!), though some of the pioneers are no longer around) for the site they know about, rather than in trying to keep a link that might change. This relates to the filing vs. piling analogy of document and email retention, which has been covered before (here).

[The precis is that some people find or recall things by where they are, like in a folder specific to that customer or project, whereas others might have a massive pile of unsorted stuff, but they can recover items within it by remembering key words or attributes, and searching the contents]

You’d think that by now, we’d all be experts at plugging queries into search engines, maybe even doing so before posting stupid stuff on Facebook. Hint – if anything looks dodgy or unbelievable, try searching snopes.com. Please.

Anyway, here are some tips for getting more accurate searches, in a few different places…

Outlook

Did you know you can direct specific search criteria through Outlook’s Search pane? Click on the search box at the top of a folder and you will see the Search menu appear (or the ribbon will automatically show you the Search pane, depending on how you’ve got views set up). If you click on a criterion (like From), then Outlook will build the query for you in the search box, so you can see what it’s doing.

It’s possible to jump a little though – instead of clicking From then editing, you could just type from: Paul to search for all mail sent by anyone with Paul in their name, or try using a combo of other attributes (there are many – see more here), (eg. to: Paul sent: last week). Lots more example tips here.

Yammer

For many users, Yammer is a great conversational and collaboration tool, but even if you don’t use it frequently to post content, it can be a brilliant way of searching for answers to frequently asked questions, that you might not get via email if you aren’t on the right DL.

Thing is, Yammer’s search tends to be a bit overly inclusive – if you enter several terms then you might have one or two more results than you’d expect.

Adding quotes around phrases (“surface 4” “release date”) helps a bit, but it will still search for any occurrence of either phrase, but by adding a + sign to each word or phrase changes the search from an OR to an AND (ie show results with all rather than any of the phrases).

Bing

If you’re looking to trim the results you get from a web search – either carried out from the Bing homepage, or from the address bar in your browser (assuming Bing is the default search engine) – there are a few operators that it’s worth remembering. Adding site:<url> to your query means you’ll only get stuff from there, so it may be quicker to use Bing to search a given site than to go to that site itself and search from within.

Eg. Try this query – site:engadget.com Lumia –iphone, will show results from the Engadget site regarding Lumia phones, that don’t mention iPhones: not too many results there. Try that same query as a web search rather than news (here), and you’ll notice a few pages in other languages. You could try filtering more by language (here). You can also stack site: clauses with an OR (must be capitals) operator, so you could say “Jenson Button” (site:bbc.co.uk OR site:pistonheads.com).

If you’re after particular types of content, you might want to throw the filetype: operator in, eg Azure filetype:pptx site:microsot.com. For more details on the kinds of operators Bing supports, see here.

Google users can find some search tips here, too.