Change your background – In case you were wondering about all those people on your Zoom call that are at a beach, let’s go to Settings and change your background. When you have your Zoom app open, look for the Settings cog in the upper right hand corner of the window. When you click it, you will have many settings that can be used. To change your background, click on Background & Filters. You will see “Virtual Backgrounds” and “Video Filters”. Try a couple that are built in and available, or upload your own video or image to be used.
Add a profile picture – If you aren’t willing to use your live image on the Zoom call, you can use a profile picture either temporarily or permanently for all meetings. To add a profile picture for an individual meeting, after you enter the meeting, click the Participants button at the bottom of the screen. Hover over your name, and click More > Add profile picture. Select the picture you want from your computer, and click Open.
Mute and Unmute – if you can’t find the microphone icon for the audio, use the spacebar to quickly mute or unmute yourself. Just press and hold the spacebar.
Record the Zoom meeting to your computer – If you have a free or paid subscription to Zoom, you can record your meeting to your computer or laptop. If you have a paid account, you can also record it to your mobile device. To enable local recording, go to Settings > Recording, and toggle it on. When you’re hosting a Zoom meeting, click the Record icon on the bottom toolbar.
Tip of the month
Gmail tips
These tips primarily are meant for those of you who use a browser to read and send Gmail, as opposed to using a software program like Microsoft Outlook. However even if you use Microsoft Outlook 99% of the time, there’s nothing to say that you can’t/won’t use the browser for your mail on occasion. So here are a couple of great tips and ideas for managing your mail:
Undo a sent message– Have you ever second guessed yourself after sending an email? Did you notice the message at the bottom of the screen showing you that the message was sent? There is another option on that notice to Undo. When you click Undo, Gmail will stop sending the message. You can also edit how long you have to cancel a message. To get Undo Send set up, go to Settings (The icon near the top right)> See All Settings and scroll down to Undo Send. From there you can set a send cancellation window of 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds.
Mute conversations – Occasionally you find yourself in a group email that continues far longer than your interest. The next time this happens to you, open the email, click the three-dot settings icon just above the email subject line and select Mute in the drop-down menu. Just like with the Undo Send, you’ll have an opportunity to Unmute if you clicked by accident.
Clean up your inbox – If you’re certain that you don’t need any emails before a certain date, you can type in “before:<DD/MM/YYYY>” into the search field and enter the date of your choice. This will filter your inbox so you can more efficiently use the select-all button to delete old emails. As a reminder, the Select All button is CTRL + A on a Windows computer and Command + A on a Mac.
