Windows 10: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Introduction

Even Microsoft admits it now: Windows 8 was a huge mistake. It was, in essence, two radically different operating systems, superimposed: the traditional Windows desktop, overlaid by a new, colorful world of tiles that was designed for the universe of touchscreen tablets and laptops. The result was two web browsers, two Control Panels, two email programs, two ways of doing everything. And, in general, people couldn’t stand it.

In hopes of getting as far from Windows 8 as possible, Microsoft skipped Windows 9 entirely; there never was a Windows 9.

But in Windows 10, Microsoft achieved something brilliant: It eliminated the split personality of Windows 8 while managing to retain the touch-friendly features. (Just in case, you know, the world moves to touchscreen computers after all.)

If you’re a PC veteran, you’ll recognize Windows 10: It’s pretty much Windows 7 with a few new features and nicer typography.

And if you’re new to all this, get down on your knees beside your bed tonight and thank whatever you believe in that you missed Windows 8 entirely. You were spared the emotional and mental whiplash of Microsoft’s changing its mind.

A Short History of Windows 10

Originally, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be a perpetual work in progress—a continuously improved, living blob of software. There wouldn’t be those periodic service packs—megalithic chunks of updates and patches—anymore; instead, Microsoft said that it would add features continuously via quiet, automatic software releases.

In practice, though, Microsoft has updated Windows 10 with big, megalithic chunks of updates about every six months, just as it always has:

• July 2015: Windows 10.

• November 2015: November Update.

• August 2016: Anniversary Update.

• April 2017: Creators Update. (That’s correct: No apostrophe.)

• October 2017: Fall Creators Update.

• April 2018: April 2018 Update.

Microsoft now intends to continue with twice-a-year updates in this vein. That should make life interesting for you—and miserable for people who write and edit computer books.

Herewith: summaries of the new features. They’re presented in three categories:

• New features in the April 2018 Update. Read this if you’ve been using an earlier Windows 10 version.

• New features added to Windows 10. If you’ve been using Windows 8.1 or earlier, read this section as well.

• New features added to Windows 8 (that are still in 10). Finally, read this section only if you’re used to Windows 7 or earlier.

What’s New in the April 2018 Update

If you’ve used an earlier version of Windows 10, here’s what you’ll find in the free April 2018 Update:

• Focus Assist. There are times when you might prefer not to be interrupted, distracted, or awakened by the appearance (and sound) of Windows 10’s notification tiles.

  In Settings, you’ll discover two levels of Focus Assist (besides “Off”). Priority only means that some notifications are still allowed to pop up and get your attention. Alarms only is more dramatic. It means that no notifications at all appear or make noise—except alarms. Microsoft figures that if you’ve set an alarm, you probably want it to go off, to prevent an oversleeping disaster.

  You can also tell Windows 10 to turn on Focus Assist automatically under certain conditions: during certain hours of the day, when you’re playing a game, when you’re at home, or when you’re duplicating your screen for projection.

• Timeline. Windows 10 already had Task View: You click an icon on the taskbar (or press +Tab) to view miniatures of all your open windows. Just click or tap the window you want; Windows switches you to it instantly.

  In the April 2018 Update, Task View gains a superpower: Timeline (Figure I-1). Now, instead of showing you miniatures only for every window open right now, it also lets you scroll down to see (or do a search for) every window you’ve had open in the past 30 days—even on other machines! Other Windows 10 PCs, sure, but even iPhones and Android phones running Microsoft apps (Office and the Edge browser).

  The Timeline is an answer, at last, to the questions, “Where did I put that?” and “Where did I see that?” If you worked on it in the past month, you’ll find it here.

Note:

That’s mostly true. Unfortunately, apps have to be updated to work with Timeline. And at the outset, most of the Timeline-friendly programs come only from Microsoft.

Figure I-1. In the new Task View, every open app is represented by a large card at top—and smaller cards represent every window you’ve had open in the past 30 days (in Microsoft apps, at least).

• Edge browser. Microsoft continues to flesh out Edge, the web browser it introduced in 2015 to replace the ancient Internet Explorer. For example, Edge finally catches up to other browsers with the addition of a speaker icon on any tab that’s playing sound, so you can mute it with a click instead of hunting through all your tabs to figure out what’s playing in the background.

  And, at last, Microsoft’s browser can memorize your address and credit cards for autofill when you’re shopping online.

  Edge, too, is now Windows’ primary reading app for ebooks and PDF documents. It gives these documents—and web pages, too, if you like—a full-screen, clutter-free layout. There’s a new option for making clean-looking printouts, too.

  Finally, there are “set-aside tabs.” You’ve got a bunch of tabs open—say, your research for an upcoming San Francisco trip. With one click on a new window icon, you can set all those tabs aside, as a group. Another new window icon opens the panel where your set-aside tab groups await, ready to be brought back en masse.

• Nearby Sharing (which Microsoft called “Near Share” during the testing period) lets you shoot files, photos, web pages, and so on to other machines nearby wirelessly, without messing with passwords, file sharing, networking, or setup. It’s infinitely superior to HomeGroup, Microsoft’s previous attempt at the casual file-sharing feature, which is gone in the April 2018 Update.

  Alas, Nearby Sharing works only with other PCs also running the April 2018 Update.

• Settings. With every new release, Microsoft brings more old Control Panel settings into Settings, meaning there are fewer and fewer occasions to dig out the Control Panel. In the April 2018 Update, for example, Settings gains the ability to manage fonts and adjust your keyboard and typing preferences.

  The world looks forward to the day when Microsoft takes the old Control Panel out behind the barn and finishes it off. Maybe in, like, the August 2023 Update.

• Fluent design. You won’t see the words “Fluent design” in Windows 10, but you’ll see Fluent design. It’s Microsoft’s latest design scheme: little animations, cursor highlightings, and simulated depth effects.

And then there’s a long list of small-ticket items that generally make Windows 10 life easier:

• Voice control (via Cortana) of more smart-home devices, like Nest, Honeywell, and ecobee thermostats.

• Elaborate controls for auto-generated musical slideshows in Photos.

• A keyboard shortcut (+H) for starting and stopping Windows’ speech-to-type feature. Dictation has always worked well, but few people use it—and maybe this will help.

• Here’s one for stylus/touchscreen owners: You can now handwrite anywhere you can type—for example, into text boxes, which auto-expand to give you room.

• The Photos app lets you stamp 3D objects or text onto your pictures.

• Microsoft’s Groove Music service is dead. Instead, the company steers you to sign up for Spotify—and lets you ask for bands, songs, or playlists there with Cortana voice commands.

Note:

There’s still a Groove Music app that lets you play music you’ve uploaded.

• The Game Bar has more controls, like on/off buttons for your camera and microphone.

• You can create folders for apps on the right side (the tiled side) of the Start menu.

• The Emoji panel no longer closes after you’ve inserted a single emoji.

• There have been lots of little updates to languages, handwriting, and touchscreen typing—including autocomplete suggestions, as on a phone, for words you’re typing.

Microsoft didn’t try to characterize this update as, for example, the Spring Creators Update (which was its reputed name until it came out); there’s no theme to it. In a way, that’s reassuring. It means Microsoft thinks Windows 10 has at last reached a uniform level of completeness without any glaring holes.

Instead, Windows 10 remains the clean, attractive, responsive, coherently designed front end to your PC that it had already become—just with a little more April 2018.

The Editions of Windows 10—and S Mode

There are no longer 17,278 different versions of Windows, praise Microsoft. No more Starter, Home, Home Premium, Superduper, Ultimate, Existential, and so on.

Only two versions are for sale to the public: Home and Pro. The differences are minor. The Pro version adds high-end features (see the box in “UP TO SPEED How to Buy Windows 10”).

Note:

There are two other versions that aren’t available to the public: Enterprise, available only to corporate buyers, and Education, available only to schools.

Here and there, you may run across references to S mode, which is new in the April 2018 Update. Microsoft says that S stands for Security, Simplicity, and Superior performance (how about just “speed?”), although it could also stand for Students and Savings; it’s designed for schools or other institutions that seek cheap computers (S-mode computers start at $190) with a fortified shell against the evils of the Internet. (Behind the scenes, S mode is Microsoft’s attempt to duplicate the success of Google’s simple, inexpensive Chromebook laptops.)

For example, in S mode:

• You’re limited to apps from the Microsoft Store, which Microsoft has tested to be free of viruses and other malware. (Maybe “S mode” also stands for Store.)

• Microsoft Edge is the default browser, and Microsoft Bing is the default search page. You can download other browsers from the Microsoft Store, and you can navigate to Google or another search page, but they’ll never be the default options.

• Windows Defender is the only antivirus program that works, at least at the outset of S mode.

Apart from these limitations, Windows 10 in S mode works exactly as described in this book.

Note:

You can’t switch a PC into S mode; you must buy a computer that’s already equipped with it. You can switch out of S mode, using a free app in the Microsoft Store—but the switch is one-way; you can’t go back to S mode on that PC.

So what’s the payoff of using a PC that’s locked to Microsoft’s software? Computers in S mode start up faster than other Windows 10 machines, are less prone to malware, and are supposed to slow down less over time. And they’re cheap.

What’s New (if You’re Used to Windows 8 or Earlier)

If you’ve never used a version of Windows 10 before, here’s what’s new to you:

• The Start menu. In Windows 10, the Start menu is back, and it works pretty much just as it always has. The Windows 8 tiles are still there, attached to the right side of the menu (Figure I-2)—but they no longer take over your entire screen, interrupting what you were doing, like the Windows 8 Start screen did.

  

  Figure I-2. In Windows 10, the right side of the Start menu offers what Microsoft calls live tiles; many of them display useful information without your even having to click, like the weather, news, the latest tweets and email, and your next appointment.

Note:

Meanwhile, a lot of conventions from the Windows 8 era are gone now. All that business about swiping in from the sides of the screen? Gone (mostly). Charms bar? Gone. App bar? Gone.

• All apps work alike. In Windows 8, there were two kinds of programs: the traditional Windows programs like Word, Excel, and Photoshop, and then a new kind designed for touchscreens. These apps, today called Microsoft Store apps, had no menus. They had no windows, either—each one filled the entire screen. They were available exclusively from Microsoft’s online store. They tended to be simple in design and function. They were, basically, tablet apps.

  In Windows 10, those apps are still around. But they behave just like Windows apps, in that they float in their own windows. They still look a little different, and there’s still no good name for them. But they’re a lot less confusing now. Some people may never even realize they’re using a different class of app.

• Cortana. You know Siri, the voice-activated “assistant” on the iPhone? Or Google Assistant, or Amazon’s Alexa? Well, Microsoft now has Cortana. Same idea, except she’s not just on your phone—she’s on your PC, which takes her usefulness to a whole new level.

• The Edge browser. Microsoft has retired the wrinkly old Internet Explorer browser and replaced it with an all-new one called Edge. It’s designed to eat up very little screen space with controls, so the web pages you’re reading get as much room as possible. (Internet Explorer is still available.) See Chapter 9.

• Task View. With one click on this taskbar button, all your open windows shrink into index cards (Figure I-1), so you can see them all at once—a great way to find a program in a haystack. In the April 2018 Update, Task View adds the Timeline (“The Timeline”).

• Virtual screens. You can set up multiple “virtual monitors,” each with a certain set of windows open. Maybe you like your email on screen 1, Facebook and Twitter on screen 2, and graphics apps on screen 3. With a simple keystroke (+arrow keys), you can bounce from one simulated monitor to another.

• Action Center. This is a panel that pops out from the right side of the screen, listing all recent notifications up top and, at the bottom, one-click buttons for on/off switches like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Battery Saver, and Airplane Mode.

• New Settings app. The newly designed Settings app offers almost every switch and slider you’ll ever need, in a clean, well-organized app. The old Control Panel is still around, filed in a junk drawer somewhere, for the rare occasions when you need an obscure option.

• Snap four apps at once. Snapping a window, in Windows, means dragging it to the right or left side of your screen, whereupon it snaps there as though magnetically, occupying exactly half the screen. You can then snap a second app into the empty half of the screen.

  In Windows 10, you can snap four windows. As a bonus, each time you snap an app, the remaining apps shrink to index cards in the empty space, making it easy to specify which one you want to snap next.

• Universal apps. Windows 10 is designed to look and work the same on every gadget that can run Windows: PCs, tablets, and even Windows phones, which you might still be able to find at garage sales. In fact, software companies can, if they wish, write their apps in such a way that the same exact program runs on all three kinds of devices. You see the same controls and the same features, auto-squished to whatever screen size you’re using. Word, Excel, and Outlook are all universal apps.

• Windows Hello (face or fingerprint sign-in). Instead of typing a password every time you wake your machine, you can just look at it. Windows Hello recognizes your face and signs you in, without your ever having to touch the computer.

  This feature works only on machines equipped with an Intel RealSense camera, which rules out any pre-2015 computers. But Windows can also sign you in with your fingerprint, if your machine has a fingerprint reader. Or even your eyeball iris, once someone sells a computer with an iris scanner.

• Continuum (Tablet mode). If you own a convertible tablet—one with a detachable keyboard, like one of Microsoft’s Surface tablets—then Windows 10 can do something very useful indeed. When you take away the physical keyboard, Windows enters Tablet mode, in which everything is bigger and more finger-friendly, each app fills the entire screen, and an onscreen keyboard pops up automatically. More on Tablet mode in Chapter 12.

• Xbox streaming. If you have an Xbox game console—downstairs in your living room, for example—you can now play its games anywhere else in the house on your tablet or laptop. The game’s audio and video stream from the console to you, wirelessly. The rest of the family can watch TV in peace, completely unaware that you’re blissing out on Halo up in your office.

• Rejiggered File Explorer. The basic desktop folder window—once called Windows Explorer, now called File Explorer—has had a makeover. The list at the left side now displays frequently accessed disks, folders, and files. The sharing controls on the Ribbon at the top have been cleaned up, too.

What’s New (if You’re Used to Windows 7 or Earlier)

If you’re used to Windows 7 or something even earlier—you never used Windows 8—then it’s probably worth reading about all the good things Microsoft added in Windows 8, which still rear their lovely heads in Windows 10:

• Smartphone features. Some of Windows’ features are adapted from smartphones, like a Lock screen that shows your battery level and the time, a Refresh command that resets Windows to its factory-fresh condition without disturbing your files, and a Reset command that erases it completely (great when you’re about to sell your PC to someone).

  And there’s an app store, for ease of downloading new apps that Microsoft has approved and certified to be virus-free.

• It’s touchscreen-friendly. Microsoft strongly believes that, someday soon, all computers will have touchscreens—not just tablets, but laptops and desktop computers, too. So Windows is filled with gestures that, if you do have a touchscreen, work as they do on phones. Tap to click. Pinch or spread two fingers on a photo to zoom in or out. Log in by drawing lines over a photo you’ve chosen instead of typing a password.

• It’s cloudy. Your sign-in account can now be stored online—“in the cloud,” as they say. Why? Because now you can sit down at any Windows 8 or 10 computer anywhere, sign in, and find all your settings just the way you left them at home: your address book, calendar, desktop wallpaper, web bookmarks, email accounts, and so on.

• It’s beribboned. The mishmash of menus and toolbars in desktop windows (called File Explorer) has been replaced by the Ribbon: a big, fat toolbar atop each window that displays buttons for every possible thing you can do in that window, without hunting.

• It comes with free antivirus software. You read that right. Antivirus software is free, built in, and effective.

• File History lets you rewind any file to a time before it was deleted, damaged, or edited beyond recognition.

• BitLocker to Go can put a password on a flash drive—great for corporate data that shouldn’t get loose.

• New multiple-monitor features. Your taskbars and desktop pictures can span multiple monitors.

• Narrator, a weird, sad, old feature that would read your error messages to you out loud, has been transformed into a full-blown screen reader for people with impaired vision. It can describe every item on the screen. It can describe the layout of a web page, and it makes little sounds to confirm that you’ve performed touchscreen gestures correctly.

• Storage Spaces lets you trick Windows into thinking that several hard drives are one big drive, or vice versa, and simultaneously gives you the incredible data safety of a corporate RAID system.

• New apps. All-new apps include Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Voice Recorder, Maps, and Movies & TV.

  On the other hand, a few Windows 8 apps have been eliminated on the way to Windows 10, including Food & Drink, Money, Health & Fitness, and Xbox Music.

• Customization. You can dress up your desktop, Start menu, and Lock screen in more ways now. Your Lock screen can be a slideshow, for example.

• OneDrive integration. When you save a new document, Windows offers you a choice of location: either your computer or your OneDrive—a free online “hard drive”. (OneDrive used to be called SkyDrive.)

• Miracast. You send video from your PC to TV sets that have Miracast wireless features—great for streaming movies or YouTube videos to your TV.

• Miscellaneous overhauls. The Task Manager has been beautifully redesigned. Parental controls have blossomed into a flexible, powerful tool called Family Safety, offering everything from web protection to daily time limits for youngsters. The Windows Recovery Environment screens you use to troubleshoot at startup have been beautified, simplified, and reorganized.

The Very Basics

To get the most out of Windows with the least frustration, it helps to be familiar with the following concepts and terms. If you’re new to Windows, be prepared to encounter these words and phrases over and over again.

Windows Defined

Windows is an operating system, the software that controls your computer. It’s designed to serve you in several ways:

• It’s a launching bay. At its heart, Windows is a home base for the various software programs (apps, or applications) that you use to do work or to kill time. When you get right down to it, programs are the real reason you bought a PC.

  Windows is a well-stocked software pantry unto itself; for example, it comes with such basic programs as a web browser, a simple word processor, and a calculator.

  If you were stranded on a desert island, the built-in Windows programs could suffice for everyday operations. But if you’re like most people, sooner or later, you’ll buy and install more software. That’s one of the luxuries of using Windows: You can choose from a staggering number of add-on programs. Whether you’re a left-handed beekeeper or a German-speaking nun, some company somewhere is selling Windows software designed just for you, its target audience.

• It’s a file cabinet. Every application on your machine, as well as every document you create, is represented on the screen by an icon, a little picture that symbolizes the underlying file or container. You can organize these icons into onscreen file folders. You can make backups (safety copies) by dragging file icons onto a flash drive or a blank CD, or you can send files to people by email. You can also trash icons you no longer need by dragging them onto the Recycle Bin icon.

• It’s your equipment headquarters. What you can actually see of Windows is only the tip of the iceberg. An enormous chunk of Windows is behind-the-scenes plumbing that controls the various functions of your computer—its modem, screen, keyboard, printer, and so on.

The Right Mouse Button Is King

One of the most important features of Windows isn’t on the screen—it’s in your hand. The standard mouse or trackpad has two buttons. You use the left one to click buttons, to highlight text, and to drag things around the screen.

When you click the right button, however, a shortcut menu appears onscreen. Get into the habit of right-clicking things—icons, folders, disks, text inside a paragraph, buttons on your menu bar, pictures on a web page, and so on. The commands that appear on the shortcut menu will make you much more productive and lead you to discover handy functions you never knew existed.

Tip:

On a touchscreen, you can “right-click” something by holding your finger down on it for a second or so.

This is a big deal: Microsoft’s research suggests that nearly 75 percent of Windows owners don’t use the right mouse button and therefore miss hundreds of time-saving shortcuts.

Tip:

Microsoft doesn’t discriminate against left-handers…much. You can swap the functions of the right and left mouse buttons easily enough.

Open →→Devices→Mouse. Where it says “Select your primary button,” choose Right. Windows now assumes that you want to use the left mouse button as the one that produces shortcut menus.

There’s More Than One Way to Do Everything

No matter what setting you want to adjust, no matter what program you want to open, Microsoft has provided four or five different ways to do it. For example, here are the various ways to delete a file: Press the Delete key; choose File→Delete; drag the file icon onto the Recycle Bin; or right-click the filename and choose Delete from the shortcut menu.

Pessimists grumble that there are too many paths to every destination, making it much more difficult to learn Windows. Optimists point out that this abundance of approaches means that almost everyone will find, and settle on, a satisfying method for each task. Whenever you find a task irksome, remember that you have other options.

Note:

This book generally offers the one or two shortest ways to accomplish a task. Life is too short to read about all of them.

You Can Use the Keyboard for Everything

In earlier versions of Windows, underlined letters appeared in the names of menus and dialog boxes. These underlines were clues for people who found it faster to do something by pressing keys than by using the mouse.

The underlines are hidden in Windows 10, at least in disk and folder windows. (They may still appear in your individual software programs.) If you miss them, you can make them reappear by pressing the Alt key, the Tab key, or an arrow key whenever the menu bar is visible. (When you’re operating menus, you can release the Alt key immediately after pressing it.) In this book, in help screens, and in computer magazines, you’ll see key combinations indicated like this: Alt+S (or Alt+ whatever the letter key is).

Once the underlines are visible, you can open a menu by pressing the underlined letter (F for the File menu, for example). Once the menu is open, press the underlined letter key that corresponds to the menu command you want. Or press Esc to close the menu without doing anything. (In Windows, the Esc key always means cancel or stop.)

If choosing a menu command opens a dialog box, you can trigger its options by pressing Alt along with the underlined letters. (Within dialog boxes, you can’t press and release Alt; you have to hold it down while typing the underlined letter.)

Don’t miss Appendix C, which lists all the important keyboard shortcuts.

The Search Box Is Fastest

If you have a keyboard, the fastest way to almost anything in Windows is the search box at the left end of the taskbar, where it says, “Type here to search.”

Used to be, this search box was at the bottom of the Start menu. But in Windows 10, it’s always available; it’s part of the taskbar now. This is also the Cortana box, where you can pose questions like “What’s the weather this weekend?” and “How many feet in 50 kilometers?”

But most of the time you’ll use this box to find and open things.

For example, to open Outlook, you can click there and type outlook. To get to the password-changing screen, you can type password. To adjust your network settings, network. And so on. Display. Speakers. Keyboard. BitLocker. Excel. Photos. Firefox. Whatever.

Each time, Windows does an uncanny job of figuring out what you want and highlighting it in the results list, usually right at the top.

Here’s the thing, though: You don’t need the mouse or trackpad to click into this box. You can just tap the key or button. The Start menu opens and your cursor blinks inside the search box.

You also don’t need to type the whole search query. If you want the Sticky Notes program, sti is usually all you have to type. In other words, without ever lifting your hands from the keyboard, you can hit , type sti, confirm that Windows has highlighted the correct program’s name, hit Enter—and you’ve opened Sticky Notes. Really, really fast.

Now, there is almost always a manual, mouse-clickable way to get at the same function in Windows. Here, for example, is how you might open Narrator, a program that reads everything on the screen. First, the mouse way:

1. At the desktop, open the Start menu (); click Settings ().

   The Settings app opens, teeming with options.

2. Click Ease of Access.

   Now another Settings screen appears, filled with options having to do with accessibility.

3. Choose Narrator.

   The Narrator tab opens.

4. Turn Narrator on.

   Narrator begins reading what’s on the screen.

OK, then. Here, by contrast, is how you’d get to exactly the same place using the search method:

1. Press ; type enough of narrator to make Narrator appear in the results list; press Enter.

There you go. One step instead of four.

(Of course, if you’re really good, you could just use the Narrator keyboard shortcut, Ctrl++Enter.)

Now, you’d be forgiven for exclaiming, “What?! Get to things by typing? I thought the whole idea behind the Windows revolution was to eliminate the DOS-age practice of typing commands!”

Not exactly. Typing has always offered a faster, more efficient way of getting to places and doing things; what everyone hated was the memorizing of commands to type.

But the search box requires no memorization; that’s the beauty of it. You can be vague. You can take a guess. And, almost every time, Windows knows what you want and offers it in the list.

For that reason, this book usually provides the most direct route to a certain program or function: the one that involves the search box. There’s always a longer, slower, mousier alternative, but, hey: This book is plenty fat already, and the rainforests aren’t getting any bigger.

About Shift-Clicking

Here’s another bit of shorthand you’ll find in this book (and others): instructions to Shift-click something. That means you should hold down the Shift key and then click before releasing the key. If you understand that much, then the meaning of instructions like “Ctrl-click” and “Alt-click” should be clear.

You Could Spend a Lifetime Changing Properties

You can’t write an operating system that’s all things to all people, but Microsoft has certainly tried. You can change almost every aspect of the way Windows looks and works. You can replace the backdrop of the screen (the wallpaper) with your favorite photograph, change the typeface used for the names of your icons, or set up a particular program to launch automatically every time you turn on the PC.

When you want to change some general behavior of your PC, like how it connects to the Internet, how soon the screen goes black to save power, or how quickly a letter repeats when you hold down a key, you use the Settings app (described in Chapter 7).

Many other times, however, you may want to adjust the settings of only one particular element of the machine, such as the hard drive, the Recycle Bin, or a particular application. In those cases, right-click the corresponding icon. In the shortcut menu, you’ll often find a command called Properties, which offers settings about that object.

Tip:

As a shortcut to the Properties command, just highlight an icon and then press Alt+Enter.

Every Piece of Hardware Requires Software

When computer geeks talk about drivers, they’re not talking about their chauffeurs (unless they’re Bill Gates); they’re talking about the controlling software required by every hardware component of a PC.

The driver is the translator for your PC and the equipment attached to it: mouse, microphone, screen, printer, scanner, and so on. Without driver software, the gear doesn’t work.

When you buy one of these gadgets, you receive a CD containing the driver software, or a download link for it. If that driver software works fine, then you’re all set. If your gadget acts up, however, remember that equipment manufacturers regularly release improved (read: less buggy) versions of these software chunks. You generally find such updates on the manufacturers’ websites.

Fortunately, Windows 10 comes with drivers for over 15,000 components, saving you the trouble of scavenging for them. Most popular gizmos from brand-name companies work automatically when you plug them in—no CD required (see Chapter 14).

It’s Not Meant to Be Overwhelming

Windows has a staggering array of features. You can burrow six levels down, dialog box through dialog box, and still not come to the end of it.

Microsoft’s programmers created Windows in modules—the digital-photography team here, the networking team there—for different audiences. The idea, of course, was to make sure that no subset of potential customers would find a feature lacking.

But if you don’t have a digital camera, a network, or whatever, there’s nothing wrong with ignoring everything you encounter on the screen that isn’t relevant to your setup and work routine. Not even Microsoft’s CEO uses every feature of Windows.

About This Book

Despite the many improvements in Windows over the years, one feature hasn’t improved a bit: Microsoft’s documentation. Windows 10 comes with no printed guide at all.

When you do find online help, you’ll quickly discover that it’s tersely written, offers very little technical depth, and lacks examples. You can’t mark your place, underline things, or read it in the bathroom. Worst of all, the chaos of rapid Windows 10 releases means that you’re never sure if the web article you’re reading applies to your version.

The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have accompanied the Windows 10 April 2018 Update. In these pages, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for using almost every Windows feature, including those you may not have understood, let alone mastered.

Incredibly, Microsoft intends for Windows 10 to run pretty much the same on desktop PCs and laptops and tablets. This book covers them all (see the box below).

About the Outline

This book is divided into seven parts, each containing several chapters:

• Part I, is really book one. These five chapters offer a complete course in the basics of Windows 10. Here’s all you need to know about the Start menu, icons and folders, taskbar, Recycle Bin, shortcut menus, Cortana, the Action Center, and other elements of the new world.

• Part II, is dedicated to the proposition that an operating system is a launchpad for programs. Chapter 6, for example, describes how to work with applications and documents in Windows—how to open them, switch among them, swap data between them, use them to create and open files, and so on.

  This part also offers an item-by-item discussion of the individual software nuggets that make up this operating system. These include not just the items in Settings, but also the long list of free programs Microsoft threw in: Paint 3D, WordPad, Photos, and so on.

• Part III, covers all the special Internet-related features of Windows, including setting up your Internet account, Edge (for web browsing), and Mail (for email). Chapter 11 covers Windows’ dozens of Internet fortification features: the firewall, antispyware software, parental controls, and on and on.

• Part IV, describes the operating system’s relationship with equipment: special features for laptops and tablets, for example, plus peripherals like scanners, cameras, disks, printers, and so on.

• Part V, explores Windows 10’s beefed-up backup and troubleshooting tools. It also describes some advanced hard drive formatting tricks and offers tips for making your PC run faster and better.

• Part VI, is for the millions of households and offices that contain more than one PC. File sharing, accounts, passwords, and remote access are all here.

• Finally, three appendixes provide a guide to installing or upgrading to Windows 10; the “Where’d It Go?” dictionary, which lists every feature Microsoft moved or deleted on the way to Windows 10; and a master list of Windows keyboard shortcuts.

GEM IN THE ROUGH The Touchscreen Verb Challenge

Microsoft intends for Windows 10 to work just as well on touchscreen tablets as it does on PCs with a keyboard and mouse (or trackpad). That presents something of a challenge to people writing books about it.

Thousands of times in this book, instructions direct you to activate something on the screen: a button, checkbox, icon, or tile. But what’s the right verb here? If you have a touchscreen, telling you to click something doesn’t sound quite right. And if you have a mouse, it’d be weird to tell you to tap something.

So in the spirit of peace and understanding, in this book, you’re generally instructed to hit, select, and choose things on the screen. Those are equal-opportunity verbs that should offend neither touch people nor mouse people.

About→These→Arrows

Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, you’ll find sentences like this: “Open →→System.” That’s shorthand for a much longer instruction that directs you to open three nested icons in sequence, like this: “Open the menu; choose . Once the Settings window opens, hit the System tab.”

Similarly, this kind of arrow shorthand simplifies the business of choosing commands in menus, or opening nested folders. See Figure I-3.

Figure I-3. In this book, arrows indicate successive selections you’re supposed to make on the screen. For example, “Choose File→Save as→Rich Text document” would mean opening the File menu, clicking “Save as,” and then choosing “Rich Text document” from the submenu.

System Requirements for Your Brain

Windows 10: The Missing Manual is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level (except system administrators, who will be happier with a different sort of book).

The primary discussions are written for advanced-beginner or intermediate PC owners. But if you’re using Windows for the first time, special sidebar articles called “Up to Speed” provide all the introductory information you need. If you’re fairly advanced, on the other hand, keep your eye out for similar shaded boxes called “Power Users’ Clinic.” They offer more technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the veteran PC fan.

About MissingManuals.com

To get the most out of this book, visit www.missingmanuals.com. Click the “Missing CD” link—and then this book’s title—to reveal a tidy, chapter-by-chapter list of the shareware and freeware mentioned in this book.

Also, to keep the book under that 3,000-page threshold that the publisher is so huffy about, a number of the most technical features of Windows 10 are explained in free, downloadable chapters at www.missingmanuals.com. (Click the “Missing CD” button, and then this book’s title.)

The website also offers corrections and updates. To see them, click the book’s title, and then click View/Submit Errata. In fact, please submit such corrections yourself! In an effort to keep the book as up to date as possible, each time we print more copies of this book, we’ll make any confirmed corrections you’ve suggested. We’ll also note such changes on the website so you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like.