BlackCSI Blog

Technology is remarkably useful for plenty of business-related tasks, but even the most knowledgeable user isn’t going to know all of the features available to them. This is why we like to cover even small, basic tips that people can use to get just a little more value out of their technology. Here are three ways you can get more out of your Windows operating system.

My team and I are big fans of a good spreadsheet, just as a simple way of organizing and contextualizing your data. Therefore, we’re all for sharing some neat ways that you can make these visualizations even easier to communicate your findings through.

Let’s talk about how you can make your Excel spreadsheets into a heat map, giving you this kind of increased visibility.

Your desktop can often become cluttered with files and programs while you’re going about your workday, and those files and programs will all have desktop icons associated with them. It’s a good practice to clean it up from time to time, but you can get immediate relief from the clutter by adjusting the size of the icons.

The prevalence of technology in even mundane, everyday tasks means that more scams are out there to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. Hackers will do everything they can to take advantage of vulnerabilities in your systems, as well as cracks in your employees’ technological know-how. One way you can take the fight to them is by reinforcing appropriate password security measures.

Microsoft Excel can be a great tool to help your business organize data, but the default size of the cell doesn’t leave much room for you to be productive. You can adjust the size of each cell depending on the purpose of the data stored within, starting with the width and the height of each column and row. Let’s go over how you can resize each individual cell.

Keyboard shortcuts are great ways to make your workday just a little more efficient without much effort. Did you know that you can make a keyboard shortcut on your Windows computer that can direct you to a specific webpage? Let’s go over how you can make it happen.

If asked, most business owners would likely rank “improving productivity” as one of their overall business goals—and for obvious reasons. Often less obvious, however, is how to go about accomplishing this particular goal. Here, we’ve put together five different but equally effective ways to do so.

Businesses cannot run without technology. This relationship has only grown more complicated and complex over time, and with so many businesses depending on their technology in ways never before seen, you’ll have to understand just how great of an impact your technology has on the way your organization runs. Here are three ways you can implement the right tools to see increased success.

Any machine needs regular maintenance which includes periodic cleaning. This includes any computer you use. We have put together three actions you can take to ensure that your machines aren’t going to break down from a lack of physical maintenance. 

Google Chrome consumes your battery a lot faster than you might think, but Google has started to take steps toward implementing a feature that could potentially help users get more battery life while using their web browser. This new feature, an experimental one implemented with Chrome version 108, could potentially be a game-changer for both personal and professional Chrome use.

So, you’ve spent a ton of time and energy transcribing data into Microsoft Excel, only to find out that you need this same data elsewhere in your spreadsheets, too. Bit of a bummer, unless you know how to accurately and easily copy all of this data. Let’s go over how you can do so.

Google Chrome can really eat away at your battery if you let it, and with Chrome being such a high-use application, Google has a feature (albeit a hidden one) that can help users consume less battery life with Google Chrome active. This new feature, available in Chrome version 108, is called Energy Saver. What do you need to know about it before implementing it?

Google Drive comes with a pre-built feature allowing users to scan a picture or document, and save it as a PDF—at least for Android smartphones. The trick can be pulled off with just a couple of taps, making it easier than ever to import documents to your Drive. Here’s how it’s done.

Collaboration is a crucial part of the workplace, and with the advent of cloud-based solutions and the collaboration functionality they provide, more developers are striving to include such features in their desktop versions as well. Microsoft Excel allows you to see certain changes made to a spreadsheet over a period of time.

Multiple monitors can really amp up your productivity, but sometimes you will encounter situations where your PC might get confused and think you’re still connected to additional monitors when you are, in fact, not, rendering your application windows unobtainable. Here’s how you can get them back.

How often do you find yourself closing tabs or windows, then immediately regretting it? This can get in the way of productivity, and while it might not be downtime, it is certainly an annoyance having to relocate whatever it is you just closed. Web browsers thankfully have functionality that allows you to completely eliminate this inconvenience.

How often do you find yourself with a full inbox, but you don’t want to delete the messages for fear there is something important in them? You could spend time digging through your inbox every time to find the important message, or you could archive them so you can find them later. Microsoft Outlook has a built-in archival feature that you can use.

We all have our favorite websites that we access all the time. Google Chrome makes it easy to set your favorite to the Home button in the browser window, allowing you to quickly make it back to your home page with a single click. Sure, you could just add a new bookmark and click that, but it’s just not the same as clicking on the Home button.

When you receive countless meeting invites or time-sensitive reminders on a day-to-day basis, it’s easy to forget a thing or two here and there. If you get an email, wouldn’t it be better to just make the event right from your inbox so your calendar can remind you about it when the time comes? Google Calendar and Gmail have this functionality built right in.

By default, when you download a file from the Internet, it will go to your Downloads folder, unless you specify for them to go elsewhere. While this is certainly a fine place for your downloaded files to wind up—at least for the short term—what if you wanted to change the default file location for your downloaded files? This is what today’s blog is all about: how you can change the downloaded file location for your Google Chrome web browser.