Hasleo Backup Suite Free puts a whole Windows system image on an external drive, and it costs nothing at home

Stop scrolling sideways MakeUseOf's Adaeze Uche works the menus instead of the formula bar: the Data Form, added from File, then Options, then Quick Access Toolbar, then All Commands, turns a wide table into a popup record you edit without scrolling, up to 32 columns and without touching formulas; the Watch Window and Evaluate Formula both sit in Formula Auditing on the Formulas tab, the first parking the value and formula of cells from any sheet in a floating panel, the second stepping through a monster calculation one cell at a time; Sheet Views on the View tab gives each collaborator a filter of their own, up to 256 per sheet, as long as the file lives on OneDrive or SharePoint; Speak Cells reads a range aloud so you can check figures against a page; Goal Seek under What-If Analysis on the Data tab works backward to the input that lands the total you need, one input cell at a time, with Solver for more; and Get Data, then From Folder, then Combine consolidates a folder of files that share a schema.

Let the paste cite itself How-To Geek's Sanya Shah found four switches after years in the app: on Windows, File, then Options, then Advanced, then Editing carries a setting that automatically includes the source link whenever you paste from the web, so research stops needing a second trip for the citation; the same Advanced page holds section passwords with an auto-lock you set anywhere from one minute to one day, and on Android a long press on the section, then the three dots, then Password protect does the same job; the Android three dots, then Settings, then OneNote floatie puts a floating badge on screen for capturing a thought without opening the app; and three dots, then Settings, then Notebooks, then Default section decides where those quick notes land, which is the difference between a filed note and a pile. The split matters: the paste setting is Windows desktop only, while the floatie and the default section are Android only.

Settings, Security and privacy Android Police's Jade Bryan Jardinico kept Google Keep and closed the gap another way: Private Space, which Google shipped with Android 15, creates a locked container on the phone, and installing Keep inside it and deleting the ordinary copy means every trip to your notes now costs a fingerprint or a passcode. He is careful about what it does not do. Home screen widgets are not supported inside Private Space, cloud sync keeps running so the same notes can still be reached another way, for example through Gemini, and the container adds friction for someone holding your unlocked phone rather than encryption that would stop a determined extraction.

Phone only, for a week MakeUseOf's Gregory Gibson banned the external keyboard, Samsung DeX and the laptop itself, then ran five real applications on an Android phone: Obsidian for linked notes and its graph, with the controls tucked into menus and Obsidian Sync carrying the vault between devices; ONLYOFFICE for DOCX files, which held formatting, edited tables, checked spelling and exported a PDF; Thunderbird for IMAP mail and attachments, a setup closer to the desktop client than most mobile mail apps; Termux for SSH into a server and Docker administration, where the extra key row of arrows, Ctrl and Tab turned out to be essential; and VLC for streaming H.264 video across the house with picture in picture. His verdict is honest about the cost: on-screen typing stays slower than a real keyboard, the screen will not show two related things at once, and VLC glitched once on first playback.