Blue Ridge Technology

If you’re a PowerPoint power user you’ve probably used a handy little feature called “Reuse Slides” from time to time. You might have already noticed after a software update that Reuse Slides is nowhere to be found! It’s sad news for many of us, but it’s true: Microsoft officially killed off this feature. So here’s what you need to know — what Reuse Slides did, why Microsoft retired it, and what you can do instead. What Was “Reuse Slides”? “Reuse Slides” was a feature that lived in a small panel within PowerPoint. It would allow you to look through slides in a different PowerPoint file (.pptx), and then pull in a slide from that file into the one you’re currently working on. If you make PowerPoints that need to enforce company fonts, logos, colors, and layout, you can already see the draw here. Instead of having to manually add and set those elements (and risk doing something slightly off-brand), you could just open up a known show using Reuse Slides and pull in a slide tha...

Passkeys Sync We’re just gonna say it: Passwords are terrible. They aren’t secure. They’re easy to steal, and most people reuse the same passwords no matter how many times we shout that it’s a bad idea 🙂. That’s why we’ve recommended two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for years. They make your accounts and devices exponentially safer and very hard to compromise. But we know they can be a hassle to use, and they still aren’t bulletproof. In the past couple of years, we’ve started tentatively recommending a newer solution that’s even more secure and even easier to use: passkeys. We haven’t gone all-in on them yet, but new updates from Microsoft make them more attractive for business use than ever before. What Are Passkeys Again? Passkeys are an authentication system that uses the security built into a device you already own — stuff like Face ID and fingerprint recognition — to log you into systems and services, even on other devices you use. There’s a ...

Copilot in the Taskbar Do you use the Search bar in your taskbar? It can already do a lot — compare it to the search function just a few versions of Windows ago, and it’s pretty impressive. It’s already evolved past simple word/character searching and can find files, settings, apps, and websites contextually connected to what you’re searching for, even if there isn’t an exact match. But it certainly has its limits. It’s still a basic-ish search tool that mostly just finds stuff for you. It can’t really do anything for you. And it can’t understand you in the way most new generative AI tools seem to. Well, that looks to be changing in an upcoming Windows 11 update. Current preview builds include a new, optional feature: adding “Ask Copilot” to your taskbar. “Ask Copilot” in Taskbar Search: How It Works In preview builds, once you enable this new features in settings, your regular taskbar search box gets a massive AI-powered upgrade. The biggest two changes are 1) AI-driven contextual un...

Scam Protection Introducing Scareware Blocker & Defender SmartScreen, Now in Edge! Does your company use Microsoft Edge as its internet browser? If so, you’ll want to know about even more ways Microsoft is helping to keep users safe — including small business users. Two new or improved features are rolling out to Windows 11 users in the latest update to Microsoft Edge. Both can help, but to get the most benefit you’ll need to know a little about what’s happening behind the scenes. New in Edge: Scareware Blocker Scareware is a malicious tactic similar to malware or ransomware. The difference here is (can you guess?) that scammers attempt to scare you into taking action that turns out to be a scam. You’ve seen these kinds of scams before: a giant flashing pop-up warning you that your system is infected, or slow, or vulnerable to attack. All you have to do is click the button, and they’ll fix everything for you… but of course what they’re really after is your money or your information...

​ 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...