How to Add a Gmail Account to Outlook Online

Microsoft Outlook Online has a dedicated button for adding a Gmail account to your online email client. Here’s how to pull your Gmail emails into Outlook in just a few clicks.

We’ve shown you how to add other email accounts into Outlook Online, but that process involved configuration pages that wanted to know things like port numbers and POP or IMAP server names. Granted, Outlook would usually fill that information in for you if it could, but it’s still a bit intimidating.

In an effort to make the process simpler and as an acknowledgment that there are well over 1.5 billion Gmail accounts, Microsoft added a dedicated “Add Gmail Account” button to Outlook Online. Here’s how it works.

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How to Refund a Game on Steam

One of the problems with video games is that it’s hard to know if we’ll like a game until we buy it and play it. That’s why it’s a good thing that Steam, the biggest digital game retailer around, offers refunds for purchases you’re not satisfied with.

If you’re unlucky enough to experience buyer’s remorse early in your gameplay experience, Steam will painlessly return your money. All you have to do is submit a request, and the game will be taken out of your library, and your money will be refunded.

1 Go to “Steam Help.” Log into your Steam account. Click on the “Steam Help” tab near the top of the screen.

2 Specify you need help with a purchase. When you click on “Steam Help,” you will be redirected to a list of options. Near the bottom of the list, you should see the option “A Purchase.” Click on this.

3 Select the game you want to refund. After you click “A Purchase,” you should be directed to a list of games you purchased on Steam. Select the game you’re looking to refund.

Explain the problem. You will then be presented with options to specify the problem with your purchase. Select the reason you’re refunding the game. Options include things like “Gameplay or technical issue” or “I purchased this by accident.

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How to Stop “Your Phone” From Opening at Startup on Windows 10

The Your Phone feature in Windows 10 is a handy way to link your PC with your smartphone. Sometimes, Your Phone might keep popping up at startup when you don’t want it to. If so, there’s a way to disable the Your Phone popup.

First, open Task Manager. To do so, right-click your taskbar. In the menu that appears, select “Task Manager.”

In the Task Manager window, click “More details” if you start with a simple view, then click the “Startup” tab.

In the “Startup” tab, locate “Your Phone” in the list and select it. Next, click the “Disable” button in the lower-right corner of the window.

After clicking disable, you’ll see “Disabled” in the “Status” column beside Your Phone in the Task manager Startup list. When you’re done, close Task Manager. From now on, Your Phone will no longer launch on Startup.

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Reset Network Settings on Samsung Devices

While most manufacturers are moving to Android uniformity with the “stock” interface, Samsung is one of the few manufacturers that continues to use its own interface (most recently named “One UI”) for Android smartphones and tablets.

If you’re trying to reset your network settings on a Samsung Android device, start by tapping the “Settings” app in your app drawer. Alternatively, swipe down from the top of your screen to view the notifications shade, then tap the gear icon.

In the “Settings” menu, tap the “General Management” option.

In the “General Management” menu, select the “Reset” option to view the available options for resetting your device.

Tap the “Reset Network Settings” option in the “Reset” menu to proceed to the next stage.

Resetting your network settings on Android will wipe all previous settings for your Wi-Fi and mobile data connections as well as any previously connected Bluetooth devices.

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How to Tell If Your PS5 Is Playing the PS4 Version of a Game

Some of your PlayStation 5 (PS5) games might be PlayStation 4 (PS4) games in disguise. Here’s how you can tell the difference between console versions and change these games to their next-gen versions.The PlayStation 5, unlike its predecessor, is backward compatible with one generation, meaning that you can play almost all PlayStation 4 games on it. However, one of the downsides is that, for some cross-gen games (games that are released simultaneously on both Sony consoles), the PlayStation 4 version is installed by default. It’s in your best interest to make sure that the game you have installed on your PlayStation 5 is the PS5 version, as there is often a graphical difference between that one and the PS4 version.

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What to Do if You Don’t See the Ultimate Performance Plan in W10

On some systems (mostly on laptops, but also on some desktops), you might not see the Ultimate Performance plan in your settings app. If you don’t, you can add it with a quick Command Prompt or PowerShell command. The command is the same for either shell, so use whichever one you want.

You’ll need to open the Command Prompt or PowerShell with administrative privileges. For Command Prompt, hit Start, type “cmd” into the search box, right-click the Command Prompt result, and choose “Run As Administrator.” For PowerShell, hit Windows+X and choose the “Windows PowerShell (Admin) option.”

At the prompt, type (or copy and paste) the following command and then hit Enter:

powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
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How to Enable the Ultimate Performance Power Plan in Windows 10

What is the Ultimate Performance Power Plan?

The Ultimate Performace power plan is designed to give an extra boost to high-power systems (think workstations and servers) by optimizing the High-Performance power plan. It’s geared toward reducing or eliminating micro-latencies associated with fine-grained power management techniques. A micro-latency is just the slight delay between when your OS recognizes that a piece of hardware needs more power and when it delivers that power. Although this may only be a fraction of a second, it can make a difference.

The Ultimate Performance plan eliminates the polling of hardware to see if it needs more juice and lets the hardware to consume all the power it needs. Also, any power-saving features are disabled to improve performance even more. Because of this, machines that operate on battery power aren’t given this option by default, as it can consume more power and kill your battery much faster.

While you may be thinking this would be great for gaming rigs, don’t get your hopes up.

The Ultimate Performance plan improves speed on systems where hardware continually goes to and from an idle state. But when you’re running a game, all your hardware already works together to populate the environment around you. The only real improvement might come upon initial startup, and you might only see a boost of a couple of frames per second. However, if you are running video editing or 3D design software that are putting occasional heavy loads on your hardware, you might see more of an improvement. There is an important caveat here. Enabling this plan will increase the amount of power your system consumes, so if you do plan on using this profile on your laptop, make sure you are plugged in at all times.

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How to Change a PowerPoint Show (PPSX) to a Work File (PPTX)

PowerPoint files come in two formats: PPTX files are editable PowerPoint presentations and PPSX files are a view-only format intended for presentations. You can edit a PPSX file, but you must first convert it back to a PPTX format.

  • PowerPoint can convert a PPSX file to a PPTX one. Here’s how.

First, open “PowerPoint” and choose File > Open to find the file you want to edit.

Go to File > Save As to save the file.

From the drop-down menu at the top right, choose “PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx)” to save the file as an editable file you can share with colleagues. Be sure to hit the “Save” button when you’re done.

Now, when colleagues click to open the file, they’ll be taken to the PowerPoint editor to make quick edits and revisions.

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How to Turn Off Smart Objects in Photoshop

Smart objects do a few different things but their biggest advantage is that they preserve the original data of the embedded image or vector file. They’re one of the ways Photoshop enables you to work non-destructively.

For example, in the composite above, the image on the left is the original image, the image in the middle is a smart object that was resized down to 10% and then resized up again, while the very blurry mess on the right is the rasterized layer resized down to 10% and then resized up again. As you can see, the smart object preserved the original image throughout the transformation while the rasterized layer has lost a lot of data.

This means that if you’re creating a composite image, you can move, resize, crop, filter, use adjustment layers, and otherwise mess around with how things look without fear that you’ll make some changes that can’t be undone. By contrast, if you work with rasterized layers, the only way to try something new is to undo everything you’ve already done and start from scratch.

On the other hand, the bonus of a rasterized layer is that you can edit them directly without getting any annoying dialog boxes.

How to Stop Photoshop from Always Creating Smart Objects

By default, whenever you add an image or vector to a Photoshop document it gets embedded as a smart object. To change that behavior so they get embedded as rasterized layers, head to Edit > Preferences General on a PC or Photoshop > Preferences > General. on a Mac.

Uncheck “Always Create Smart Objects When Placing,” and click “OK.”

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