Top 5 Useful Windows 7 Tips and Tricks

While you will find many articles with Windows 7 tips very few of them are useful to the average users. We look at the top 5 useful Windows 7 tips that can help make life a little easier.

1. Lock your Computer

When you are away from your desk you may want to secure your computer from unauthorised access by locking the screen (Taking it back to the login screen). It is very easy to do this by pressing a  combination of the windows key (the one between alt and ctrl on most keyboards) and the L key together. This will lock your screen and require a password.

Note: To do this your account must be password protected.

2. Rename a batch of files

This technique allows you to rename a collection of files and folders in one go. For example if you have a lot of holiday snaps you may wish to rename them all “Holiday” followed by a unique number. Using this technique will rename the files Holiday(1) Holiday(2) Holiday(3) etc.

Select all the files you wish to rename either by dragging the mouse or if it is all the files using edit/select all. Press F2 and then type the name into the first file and press enter. All your files will be renamed.

3. Improve readability of text with ClearType

ClearType is a piece of software included with windows 7 that allows you to improve the quality of the text on 

the screen to make it easier to read. The program shows you a number of text examples and asks you to choose which is easiest to read and adjusts your display based on the answers.

To start Cleartype click the start/windows button in the bottom left corner of your screen. In the search box at the bottom type cttune.exe. This will launch the program

4. Access recent folders

On the taskbar at the bottom of your screen is a folder icon. Clicking the folder opens the document section of the libraries folder but if you right click you will get a list of recently accessed folders. You can also pin you favourites to this menu

4. Pin folders to the task bar via windows explorer

Pinning a folder to the windows explorer folder on the task bar is very easy to do. For example you may want to pin a frequently accessed folder you use for work. Find the folder you want to pin and click your left mouse button on it and hold. Drag the folder to the task bar until you see a message say “pin to windows explorer” then let go of the mouse button. If you now go back and use tip 4 you will see your folder at the top.

5. Wiggle away those windows

This is a useful little trick for those of you that often have multiple windows open. There are times you want to minimize everything but the window you are working on. If you use the show desktop button it minimises all of the windows. Worry not there is a way to keep that window open.

Left click and hold in the top bar of the window you want to stay open (the bit where the name of the program is along with the maximise and close buttons) While holding wiggle the mouse from side to side quickly and you will see all the windows minimise. To bring them all back just repeat.