Many software programs have a “New” option: new document, new spreadsheet, new presentation, new artboard, new musical score, etc. A new file is full of exciting possibilities, but it can also be quite daunting. Rather than staring at a blank page of a new document, consider jump-starting a new project by recycling one of your existing documents.

Client: can you help me fax a form to my doctor’s office?

Me: I can, if you have fax capability, but it would be much better to scan the page and either email it to the doctor’s office or upload it to the office’s secure website portal. Faxing is old-school technology.

I’ve gotten a number of these texts lately. Perhaps you have as well. Therese, sorry for the last minute notice but I can't join you for lunch today. My apologies! Jim, I haven’t heard back from you about the family reunion. We will miss you if you are not there. This attempt to engage us is, sigh, another scam.

Perhaps you are a frequent user of the ellipse: punctuation "used to mark an omission from quoted speech or text … or to signal an incomplete or unstated thought, or a pause or gap in speech or text." (Chicago Manual of Style)

There are two avenues to using an ellipse correctly: when to use it* and how to type it. This ITmail focuses on how to type it.

In computer use, just as in the rest of life, it is good to have "Plan B" in case "Plan A" doesn't work out.

We all get emails letting us know our various subscriptions will soon renew. Do we even have such subscriptions? Must we renew them?

I acknowledge that too many of my ITmail topics are about passwords. And this is another one. But passwords are a source of much frustration — and seem only to keep us out of our own accounts — so perhaps the more we discuss how to manage them, the less frustrating they will be.

Phone scams have been around for years and we are getting smarter about avoiding them. Best just not to answer calls from numbers you don't recognize.

Auto-Correct is your phone thinking it knows better than you what you want to say. You start typing and your phone finishes the word for you. This is helpful ... unless it's not the word you want to use.

This story is not about me and my husband, and probably not about you, your spouse, or your partner. But someone was feeling this way, and the dialog with tech support is quite creative. Enjoy.

I’ll try to save you the time a few of my clients have already spent: some banks won’t allow new account holders to pay bills though Quicken’s Direct Connect feature. The bank recommends you pay bills from the bank's own website, and sync the transactions to Quicken, rather than pay bills directly from Quicken. This might be a good thing.

Don’t miss a good video; tap the "subtitles/closed captions” icon and read the audio instead.

There's little more deflating in the tech world than your computer rejecting your User ID and Password. Ugh.

Online shopping often depends on trusting the color you see on the screen. But internet color can be tricky. The color you see on the screen may not look the same on the printed page, your wall, your lips, your car, your sweater, your sofa, or your to-die-for shoes.

We’ve all had to fill out forms on the internet and take surveys that ask for our input. Sometimes we’re just asked to check a few boxes, but other times there are whole sentences involved. Here’s some advice you may find helpful.

If you receive a gift you want someone else to have, you might "re-gift" it. Before you do, however, would you replace the original card with one of your own? Of course you would. Yet …

We all know we shouldn't believe everything we read on the internet, and that’s just good general advice. But, to be more specific, there are two categories of “not to believe” stuff: intentionally misleading information and outdated information.

Need a "special character" in a document? The Registered symbol (®), the Trademark symbol (™), the degree symbol (º), and the checkmark symbol (✓) are a few of the hundreds of available characters. Here's how to find them.

Every saved computer file must have a name; the more consistent and descriptive you name your files, the faster you will find what you are looking for.

If you’ve worked with me or read my ITmail, you know I enjoy creating non-computer analogies to help define and explain computing terms.