Most PC mistakes are easy to undo if you know how. Edward Munn reveals quick, reliable fixes for six of the most common blunders
Instantly undo your last mistake Ctrl+Z is one of the most useful keyboard shortcuts you can ever learn. In Microsoft Office programs, such as Word and Excel, it can be used not only to quickly undo your last mistake but also to jump back an almost unlimited number of steps to restore anything you’ve recently edited. In fact, when you make a change anywhere in Windows, such as renaming or deleting a file, pressing Ctrl+Z is normally the quickest way of restoring it to its previous state.
This life-saving keyboard shortcut isn’t exclusive to Microsoft tools and should always be the first thing you try when you make any mistake that you’re desperate to undo. In most cases, Ctrl+Y performs the reverse action, letting you redo steps that you’ve just undone. Beware of being too enthusiastic with Ctrl+Z, though, because not all programs offer the redo function, so you could end up inadvertently deleting your work!
Reopen accidentally closed tabs
When you close lots of browser tabs at once, it’s easy to shut one down by mistake. There are a couple of ways you can restore tabs you’ve accidently closed in both Google Chrome and Firefox, the quickest of which is to simply press Ctrl+Shift+T. This keyboard shortcut isn’t limited to only reopening the last tab you shut, so you can keep pressing it to restore each successive closed page.
If you’ve shut a lot of tabs and only want to open one specific web page, open your browser’s main menu and click History to display a summary of recently closed web pages. Simply click the one you want to reopen.
You can find your recently closed tabs in Firefox by selecting History from the main menu. There’s also an option to Restore Closed Tabs, which retrieves all your recently closed tabs in one click.
Unfortunately, when you accidently close a page containing a half-filled form, your browser won’t remember what was typed when the tab is restored, but by installing Lazarus for Chrome (bit.ly/lazchrome406) or Firefox (bit.ly/lazfirefox406), you can recover whatever you’ve typed in a single click.
Recover Office d|ocuments you didn't save
If your PC has ever crashed while you were using Microsoft Word, Excel or indeed any Office program, you’ll be familiar with the dread of not knowing how much of your work has (or hasn’t!) been saved. In Office 2007 onwards, there’s a handy feature you can enable to make sure your files are frequently auto-saved so they’re always protected in case of a technical malfunction.
To check if the feature is activated, click File (or the Microsoft Office button) in the appropriate program and select Options and Save. From this menu, make sure that the box to ‘Save AutoRecover information every X minutes’ is ticked. You can then set how frequently your files are saved.
In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you should also select the box to ‘Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving’. Now, when an Office application closes without you saving the file, the Document Recovery task pane will appear the next time the program is opened. The time of the last auto-save is displayed alongside the file name and, by clicking the down arrow, you can opt to Open, Save As or Delete the file.
Stop typing over text
Have you ever started typing in a document or email, only to see the characters after the cursor disappear with each key press? If so, the chances are that you’ve accidently pressed the Insert key, which activates overwrite mode. It’s one of the most frustrating mistakes you can make, but it’s also one of the easiest to fix, because in most cases all you need to do is press the Insert key again to deactivate the feature.
‘Overtype’ has thankfully been completely disabled in recent versions of Microsoft Word because it’s so frequently activated in error but if, for some strange reason, you want to enable it, you can do so by clicking File, Options and then selecting the box to ‘Use the Insert key to control overtype mode’.
Restore your default browser
It’s easy to press Enter or click OK in haste when a new browser asks if you want to set it as the default program, but how do you restore your favourite browser as the default if the same message doesn’t appear when you next open it? Thankfully, there’s an easy fix. Type default into the Start menu, click Default Programs and select ‘Set your default programs’. Find your favourite browser in the list, select it and then click ‘Set this program as default’.
If you already have Chrome open and want to set it as your default browser, you might find it quicker to click Settings from its main menu and then select the option to ‘Make Chrome my default browser’. In Firefox, you can do the same by opening the main menu, clicking Options and selecting Make Default under General. In Opera, click the Menu button, choose Settings, then Browser and click ‘Make Opera my default browser’.
Cancel an email you've just sent
Have you spotted a mistake in an email you’ve sent when it’s too late to do anything about it? With Gmail’s excellent Undo Send feature, you can buy yourself a little more time to remember to attach an all-important document or change your mind about an angry rant, even after you’ve clicked Send. To activate the feature, click Gmail’s cog icon, select Settings and under General, tick the box to Enable Undo Send. Below, you can set the send-cancellation period to anything from 5 to 30 seconds (remember to click Save Changes afterwards). Now, when you send an email, a notification appears - for the time you specified - showing the option to ’Undo’ your email as well as the usual ‘View message’ button.
Note that if you click View Message or navigate away from the inbox, the Undo button will disappear immediately, so if you have any doubts about what you’ve just sent, click Undo straight away and you’ll return to the Compose view, where you can edit your message, then resend the corrected version.
NEVER LOSE A FILE AGAIN
If you use the Desktop app for a cloud service such as Google Drive or Dropbox, it’s a good idea to save your important files to a folder that’s automatically synced to the cloud, so you can recover your work if your PC suffers a disaster and you can’t use it. Many cloud services also include the option to recover previous versions of your files, which means you can view your documents as they appeared a few weeks ago. To view the previous versions of a file in Dropbox, right-click it on www.dropbox.com and select ‘Previous versions’. You can do the same in the web version of Google Drive, by right-clicking a file and selecting ‘Manage versions...’.