Multitasking and Shutting Down
So far we've concentrated on some of the skills needed to use various apps on your PC. Let's build on those, use multiple apps and once and finally, look at shutting down the PC.
One of the key features of Windows is that you can run multiple apps at once. This works really well for things like writing an email while referring to the calendar to see when you are free, or reading a website and making notes or copying text from it into a document in WordPad.
Theoretically you can have as many Windows open as your computer can fit in memory, however practically, it's hard to actually use more than three or four at once.
Once you have an app open, to open a second app, simply click or tap on a shortcut (this is where minimising apps with WINDOWS+M or the clicking to the right of the taskbar clock comes in handy) or bring up the Start menu and search or select an app from there.
You can see which apps you have open in the Taskbar. Apps which are pinned to the taskbar but not open, are shown as regular icons, whereas apps which are open have a blue / white line underneath them.
Switching between open apps
Now that we have several apps open, it's important to know how to switch between them. As you switch between apps, they will stay as they were, so if you were halfway through writing a sentence in WordPad and switched to the Weather, next time you switch back to WordPad, your document will still be open, halfway through your sentence.
Note that as always, it's a good idea to save your work regularly, as once you know how to open multiple apps at once you run the risk of not just losing one document, but losing multiple documents at once if you have several things open and the computer loses power.
Note also if you are using a laptop, it is still possible for something to happen to cause a battery powered computer to "crash" or suddenly reset itself so it's important to save your work and back it up regularly regardless of what device you are using.
As always, there are several ways to accomplish switching between apps so use the way (or ways) which works best for you.
Clicking or tapping the icon on the taskbar for the app you wish to switch to will take you directly to that app.
With the keyboard, hold down the ALT key and tap TAB. Doing this and then letting go will take you straight to the last app which is open which had focus (it won't switch back to an app if you actually closed it).
If you hold down ALT, press the TAB key and let go ONLY of the TAB key, as long as you have ALT held down a window will appear in the centre of screen, showing little preview Windows for everything else you have open. You can keep tapping TAB to move the focus between these and then let go of both keys when the focus is on the one you wish to return to.
The other method is the "Task View", which you can get to either by pressing the Task View button on the taskbar, a thin white square with a rectangle behind it, or by pressing Windows+TAB. The Task view works very similarly to ALT+TAB except you don't need to keep anything held down. This is the easiest method to use on a tablet as the button is there on screen. Once you have the task view enabled, preview Windows for each open app are displayed in a grid on screen and you can tap or click on the one you want (or use the ARROW keys to navigate through them and press ENTER to select one).
Resizing Windows
Note that this section only works in Desktop mode. You can access Desktop mode on a tablet by tapping four fingers on screen at once and turning "Tablet mode" off (you can also slide your finger in from the right edge of the screen).
Apps you have open can be full screen, or "Windowed". When apps are full screen, they take up, as the name implies, the full amount of the screen (aside from the taskbar at the bottom). This is ideal if you are only working in the one app and want to make the most of your monitor and be able to see as much of the contents of that app as possible. It makes the screen less crowded and so, easier to see, and it also means that Window elements are in predictable locations. For instance the title bar will be at the very top of the screen, with the "X" to close at the very top right, the system tray (if the app has one) at the very bottom, just above the task bar and so on.
To set the app which currently has focus to be full screen, press WINDOWS+UP ARROW. If the app is already in full screen, then nothing will happen. If you look up at the top right corner of the app, you have the "X" to close that we just mentioned. Just to the left of that is an icon which is either a square, or a square in front of another square. If the app is currently in "Windowed" mode (and not taking up the full screen), there will be one square. Clicking or tapping this square "Maximises" the app to take up the full screen.
If the app is already in "Full Screen" mode, there will be two squares, one in front and slightly below the other. If you click or tap this icon, the program will go to being in Windowed mode. The keyboard shortcut for this is WINDOWS+DOWN ARROW.
The leftmost icon in this group is "Minimise". It is represented by a flat line. Clicking or tapping on this icon, or pressing WINDOWS+DOWN ARROW when an app is already in Windowed mode, will minimise the app to the taskbar and focus will move to the next app.
You can resize a windowed app by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, and when the mouse pointer changes to a double ended arrow you can hold down the left mouse button and drag the window edge in the desired direction.
A more precise way of resizing windows can be done by "Snapping" them to the sides. To do this, press WINDOWS+LEFT ARROW to make an app take up the exact left half of the screen. If you move the focus to a second app you can then press WINDOWS+RIGHT ARROW to make that app take up the exact right hand half of the screen. This puts the two apps side by side, completely filling the screen between them.
If you press WINDOWS+UP ARROW on an app which has been snapped to the left or right half of the screen, the app will shrink to take up the top (left or right) quarter of the screen.
Note that pressing WINDOWS+UP ARROW behaves differently on an app which is snapped to the side of the screen compared to an app which is windowed but not snapped to the side of the screen!
Pressing WINDOWS+DOWN ARROW on an app snapped to the left or right half of the screen will shrink the app to take up the bottom (left or right) quarter of the screen.
You can maximise an app which is snapped by pressing WINDOWS+UP ARROW to snap it to the top corner of the screen and then WINDOWS+UP ARROW again.
With the mouse you can snap a window to either side or a corner by clicking the left mouse button on the title bar of the app and then dragging (move the mouse without lifting the button up) the window to either side or any corner. Visually a very thin grey line appears where the window will snap to if you move close enough to an edge or corner.
Printing
One task you may wish to do with your documents from time to time, is print them. There are quite a number of options for printing available, although as with Saving documents, the default options are exactly what the majority of people need most of the time.
Most devices (Printers, keyboards, scanners etc) will be setup automatically by Windows when you plug them in. The first time you connect them, Windows may give you a message saying it is setting it up, and after 30 seconds or so (often less) you should be able to use your new device.
To print from most apps is very similar - there is usually an icon on the ribbon or toolbar which looks like a printer which you can click or tap, or you can press CONTROL+P.
More often than not, if you just one want copy of your document sent to the default printer, you can just press ENTER on the dialogue box which appears.
Wordpad doesn't have a ribbon icon, however on the title bar, where the quick access toolbar is (on the left), there is a line with a down facing triangle which is the "Customise quick access toolbar". If you click this, there are a number of options, including Quick Print, and Print Preview. If you select either of those they will be added to the quick access toolbar and you can access those either by clicking or tapping on them, or by pressing ALT+NUMBER, where 1 is the first item (Save, by default), 2 is the second (Undo) and so on.
In the File Menu for WordPad is a print button, which, just like pressing CONTROL+P, brings up a Print Dialogue box. Alternatively, that print button also has a jump list, which has three options: "Print", "Quick Print", and "Print Preview".
If you open the Print dialogue box (either through the file menu or by pressing CONTROL+P), you are presented with a dialogue box which gives you a range of options. These vary from app to app and from printer to printer, but they generally include:
Select Printer
This allows you to choose which printer to use, if you have more than one. Sometimes, as well as any physical printers, you may have one or more options which "Print" the document to various types of file, for instance "Microsoft Print to PDF" which creates a PDF file out of your document.
Print to file
This option creates a "printer" file which you can send to your printer later (To do it is more complicated than just opening the file and printing it again though).
Preferences
Allows you to set printer options specific to your model, for instance double sided printing or changing from colour to black and white.
Find Printer
This lets you look for a new printer if it has not been detected by Windows already or if you want to print to a printer elsewhere on your network.
Page Range
The options in this section are radio buttons, and not all of them will be active, depending on whether you have text selected or multiple pages: All (the default), Selection, Current Page, Pages. If you select "Pages" then you have an edit field where you can enter the number of pages to print, for instance "2-4" would print pages 2, 3 and 4, "1,3,5" would print pages 1, 3 and 5.
Number of copies
This option lets you select the number of copies you wish to print of your document (or parts of it if you selected another option under Print range)
Collate
If you do select more than one copy then the "Collate" checkbox becomes available. With "Collate" checked (the default option) all of the first copy will be printed, then all of the second copy and so on. With Collate unchecked, the printer will print all the copies of page 1, then all the copies of page 2 and so on.
All of the above options are in TAB order, so if you press TAB through this dialogue box, you should encounter the options in the order listed above. Alternatively you can click or tap on any option to jump straight to it.
When you press CONTROL+P to bring up the Print dialog box, it is setup to print one copy of your full document to the default printer, and if that's what you want to do, you can simply press ENTER as "Print" is the default button.
Finally the two other options we mentioned earlier in the File Menu were "Quick Print" and "Print Preview".
Quick Print does the same as pressing CONTROL+P then ENTER - it prints one copy of the whole document to your default printer without bringing up the dialogue box, so having that in your quick access toolbar would be handy if you often need to do that. Print Preview brings up an image of your document as it will appear once printed. One difference between simply zooming out in Wordpad and the Print Preview, is that print preview accurately shows you where page breaks will be in your document.
Closing apps
We've already covered closing apps, but having just covered opening multiple apps, it's a good time to remember to close them again. Not only will this help keep things running smoothly, but it will also save you from losing your work if you forget that you had a document open which you hadn't saved.
Remember that if you do try to close an app which has an open, unsaved file (such as a document you had started in WordPad), the app you are trying to close will likely ask you what you want to do with it. It's important to read the dialog box which comes up and respond appropriately. If you click on the "X" at the top right of the dialogue that appears for instance, what will happen is that the dialogue box itself will close, just as if you had pressed the cancel button. The focus will return to the app, and when you try to close it again, the same thing will happen. In that situation, it's important to note what the document is that you were writing, and whether you do want to save it, and if so, use the "Save", otherwise press the "Don't save" or similar button to close the app.
No new keystroke to learn for this section, just a recap of a couple we've already looked at:
ALT+TAB moves you between open Windows.
Clicking or tapping on the taskbar icon for an open window (with the white line underneath) moves to a specific window.
ALT+F4 closes the current window.
Tapping or clicking the "X" in the top right hand corner of a window closes that window.
Shutting down the PC
Finally, when you've finished using your PC, it's a good idea to shut it down. This saves wasting electricity (or battery), ensuring it will be ready to use when you next turn it on. To shut the computer down, first ensure you have closed all open apps, then open the start menu, choose Power from the left side of the menu (near the bottom, just above "all apps", and then "Shut Down".
In that Power sub-menu there are three options, sleep, shut down and restart:
Sleep
This saves a snapshot of everything you have open, puts the PC in a low power state, turns off the screen and hard drive etc so it's almost off. When you turn it back on again (by pressing a key or the power button or opening your laptop), it is able to come back ready to use in just a few seconds.
Sleep mode works well if you are just leaving the computer for a short period - to have lunch, taking your laptop from one class to the next or one meeting to another etc, but it is a good idea to shut down fully if you won't be using the computer for awhile, and at least at the end of each day.
Shut Down
Shut Down completely powers off the entire computer. Nothing is left running and no Windows that you have open are 'saved' to come back to. The computer will boot up afresh when you next turn it on and doesn't waste any power while the computer is off.
Restart
Sometimes you need to restart the computer - for instance if you have just installed an app which needs access to a file which the system uses all the time. Sometimes you might encounter a problem or app which doesn't behave as it should. In this case the best option is often to turn the computer off and then back on again - or in one step, to restart it. It's often one of the first problem solving strategies of IT Helpdesk people (As caricatured in the BBC sitcom "The IT Crowd") and it is actually effective in resolving a range of problems.
Note: If you are shutting down your computer completely and then turning it back on (to resolve a problem for instance), you can either use the "Restart" feature in the shut down menu, or if you want to use Shut down, ensure the PC has completely shut down then leave it for around 10 seconds once you feel the fan stop before pressing the button.
After instructing your PC to shut down, occasionally, it may install updates it has downloaded prior to shutting down. This is normal but can make the PC take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes extra to shut down.
You may notice the next time it turns on, that it may need to finish installing updates so it may take longer than usual to start up. This is normal and is an important part of keeping your computer up to date.
Microsoft use these updates to roll out a number of things, particularly security patches, fixes for bugs, and new features.