Blue Ridge Technology

​ Is your team experimenting with AI tools at work? What about you? Maybe an even more important question: do you and your team members have confidence in how to use it well, and how to stay safe while doing so? No matter how you feel about generative AI tools, the reality is that people are using them at work. And the big software companies, including Microsoft, are pushing these tools hard. Open any productivity app, right-click on text, or even just open your Gmail and you’ll instantly be greeted with some kind of AI invitation: Google Docs is currently begging me to “save time creating beautiful documents,” and Word wants to “help me write”—and that’s just two examples. So if these tools are getting embedded into the software and services you use to get work done, it makes sense to grow your team’s AI literacy. Maybe you won’t go all-in on AI tools, but people need to know the do’s and don’ts—and how to avoid unnecessary risks. It’s A Weird Time This is a weird time for many busine...

​The dreaded disappearing document is finally almost truly a thing of the past for Microsoft Word users. And it’s about time! If you’re still saving your documents locally, then you know the drill: you work for hours on a document or presentation, and then suddenly you’re stuck. The words you’re typing aren’t showing up, the cursor isn’t moving right, or the window crashes out entirely. And instantly, panic ensues: how long has it been since I hit “save”? Is my entire report lost forever? Thankfully, this happens less than it used to. Microsoft has already made some decent progress in this area, and hopefully you already have some sort of autosave set up. But it still happens often enough to be the stuff of nightmares, and Microsoft’s finally doing something about it. The Status Quo Is a Mess Currently, Word users have all kinds of options on how and where to save their files. You can save them to your local hard drive, to the network, to external storage, to OneDrive, or to a third-pa...

You know that sick feeling when your computer freezes, Word closes, and hours of work vanish. Most people learn the hard way that “I thought it saved” is not a strategy. The good news: Microsoft has built multiple safety nets into Word that can dramatically reduce (and often eliminate) lost-work scenarios. The even better news: with the right setup, you can make “Save” almost irrelevant for day-to-day editing. The big change: Word can save for you, automatically Microsoft Word has an AutoSave feature that can save your document every few seconds while you work. ( support.microsoft.com ) There’s one key requirement that trips people up: AutoSave only works when the file is stored in OneDrive or SharePoint (Microsoft 365). ( support.microsoft.com ) In most cases, you’ll also need an active Microsoft 365 subscription . ( support.microsoft.com ) If your document is sitting in a local folder like Documents on your PC (or on an on-prem file server), Word may still protect you with AutoRe...

Hard to believe, but another new year is already upon us! From all of us at Blue Ridge Technology, we hope your 2025 was a great year, both in business and outside of it. As we look ahead to 2026, most of us are giving some thought to resolutions, goals, or commitments for the new year. This is certainly worth doing, but this isn’t the place to talk about fitness goals or healthy eating. Instead, let’s think about what kinds of New Year's resolutions your business should make, especially surrounding tech and IT. 1. Find One Process to Automate — and Do It Business automation tools have come a long way in the last couple of years, thanks in large part to artificial intelligence (AI). We know that at this point some readers’ hackles may go up: there’s a lot of hype around AI, and some worry about job displacement. Those are both real concerns, but there are great automations that don’t fall into either category. Here’s an example. Just recently at a routine doctor’s appointment, the ...