Tag: Windows 10

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Windows 10 MAGNIFY!

Another day at work, and your boss is checking in to see what you’ve accomplished. Of the several windows you have open, both for the project and for reference, one has very small text, and another has a font colour that doesn’t stand out against the background. How can you show your boss your progress without them having to squint 6 inches away from your screen? Or perhaps you’re presenting an Excel spreadsheet to a huge room. How can you make sure the people at the back can see the values in the cells?

Windows 10’s magnifier shortcut is your easy accommodation for this problem. By pressing Windows Logo Key + = (equals), you can zoom your screen in on wherever your cursor sits. This shortcut comes in three versions. In Full Screen Version (Ctrl + Alt + F), the entire screen zooms in on your cursor. In Lens Version ( Ctrl + Alt + L), a small window showing the magnified area appears. In Docked Version (Ctrl + Alt + D), the magnified area is displayed in a wide panel that appears at the top of the screen. These versions can be cycled between using Ctrl + Alt + M. In all three versions, the area magnified changes depending on where you move your mouse, and each version is also accompanied by a miniature window which allows you to:

  • Change the degree of magnification
  • Access a text-to-speech feature
  • Change the speed and accent of the text-to-speech feature*

Exit the magnifier by pressing Windows Logo Key + Esc.

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Windows 10 Emojis: A Shortcut

Imagine that you’re a CSIS agent, and you’ve been asked to write up a report regarding the text messages exchanged between two suspects in a terror plot. Straightforward enough – unless the suspects use emojis. What is your senior agent going to think if your report states that one suspect used the “exploding head” emoji? Without a way to show the emojis themselves in high resolution, confusion might ensue.

Of course, you could have plenty of mundane reasons to want emojis in your documents as well. Perhaps you want your emails in Outlook to seem more approachable, or maybe you want to construct a simulated text conversation on a PowerPoint slide. Fortunately, Windows 10 has a solution: a searchable emoji keyboard. This tool can be called upon in almost any Windows 10 app by pressing the  Windows Logo Key + . (period). The dialogue box that appears is the same in any app that you open it in, and has all the same emoji options that you have on your phone, as well as pre-made “kaomojis” [（づ￣3￣）づ╭❤～, (❁´◡`❁), etc.]. You can keep typing in the same spot in the document to search for a specific emoji, or you can click on the dialogue box’s various category tabs to view related options.