Researching articles. Writing school assignments. Quoting other people in blog posts. During each activity, I usually cut text from one document and paste it into another.

The resulting text may make sense, but it often ends up looking like a ransom note, with different sections of text cut out of the headlines of various magazines and newspapers. That’s because the original publishers of the source texts use their own formatting, which can make words appear in different colours, fonts, sizes and so forth.

This isn’t a good look. Fortunately, there are several ways to prevent this problem from happening. Here …

Today’s tip is part tech, part research. It’s a simple reminder to give a little love to your RSS reader.

(You ARE using an RSS reader, aren’t you? You’re not? Here’s a nice primer on why RSS is more important than ever in 2018.)

Whether you use Feedly, Inoreader, The Old Reader (my personal favourite) or something else, why not take a few minutes to check whether you’ve got any dead/defunct feeds among your subscriptions.

If a feed is dead or hasn’t updated in a really long time, does that mean the site is no longer …

People who try to recall an email after they’ve sent it might think it’s a good idea to close the barn doors after the horses have all fled.

That bit of snark comes courtesy of email systems that boast “recall” tools. I tried the one in Microsoft Outlook about a decade ago. It didn’t work for me, and I dealt with the fallout from a misunderstanding.

So I switched tack. Now I prevent fallout from poorly worded emails so I don’t have to perform after-the-fact damage control.

How do I do that, you ask? Simple: I wait an hour or …

Are there fillable PDF forms on your website?

When loaded within a browser, the fields in forms like these generally can’t be filled out – the PDF will need to be downloaded in order to be filled out.

Why not cut out a few extra steps for your site’s visitors, and make the PDF automatically download rather than load in-browser?

A hat tip to Gabriola Graphics for this super simple solution to do just that:

“All you have to do is add the word download to your <a> tag and if your browser supports it your visitor will …

Do you have two or more email addresses? Tired of flipping between web pages to check them all? Why bother. Instead, set them all up in one email client.

Here’s what this looks like on my computer.

When I click “Inbox” I can see all inbox messages from the six accounts listed here. To focus on the contents of just one inbox, I click the name of that inbox.

Given how much time people still spend on email, this tactic ought to help save time. Also, I can file all my email in my own folders, offline, by having them …

Imagine if your email system could look like this at the end of your day (presuming your inbox is empty):

This is more likely to happen if email lands in the right folder without you having to triage it from your inbox. Dealing with each message in the order it was received in your inbox can lead to context switching — a major drag on productivity. The time spent doing triage can instead be used to handle business email.

To minimize email triage time, build these five email habits:

1. Set Up Folders in a Logical Manner

Having folders scattered …

Each time an electronic document comes into being, metadata is created along with it. People often add their own, too. From the obvious (like page numbers) to the obscure (like dates of creation and author names), every piece of metadata serves some purpose.

During discovery, document metadata can prove just as important as the visible contents in the document. That’s why legal teams need to comb every document for metadata. (It’s also why many use metadata “scrubbers” on documents they share with other people.)

Things can get interesting when one legal team unwittingly sends documents to opposing counsel that contain …

A picture is worth a thousand words, and pictures of your device’s screen are no exception. Those screen shot images can help people troubleshoot problems with your device — and help you better communicate how-to instructions as well.

Sometimes you will see people taking pictures of their device screens with their own (or other people’s) phones. Don’t do that. There’s an easier way. Instead, investigate your device’s built-in ability to take screen shots — also known as screen grabs or screen captures.

Types of Screen Captures

You can capture your device’s behavior in several different ways.

Static captures

These are …

When I start to write a document, the ideas in it never get to the page in publishable order. (I know I’m not alone in this.) Pieces of the “story” float about.

Many writers feel a compulsion to write from the start of a new document. That compulsion could make writing feel like cycling while gently holding the brakes. In more severe cases, it seems to lead to what some people call “writer’s block” and painful delays in drafting a document.

What writers need is a method they can use to create a first draft. Of course, lots of magic …

Does your firm or organization have shortened office hours over the summer? Or perhaps you’re taking some time off over the next couple months and therefore closing up your office for a week or two. Either way, you want to make sure potential clients aren’t showing up at your office but finding it unexpectedly closed.

If your office hours will be deviating from the norm this summer, make sure you load those exceptions into your Google My Business profile so that they automatically appear in your maps and search listing.

To do so, log into your Google My Business account …