tech tip of the week – Page 15

Tech Tip of the Week: Hold for Authentication when Printing

Oftentimes the root of Mac printing issues relates to the keychain. An incorrect password might have been typed and saved or you may have changed your UIUC password and now your device is repeatedly trying to print with the wrong credentials. If this is the case when you print you will likely see “Hold for Authentication”.

To fix this you can go to Keychain Access then look for any credentials including printer names or ischoolprint and delete them. Then try printing again. Hopefully, at this point, it will pop up asking for credentials. You should enter your current netID and UIUC password, but do not save these credentials to the keychain to avoid this issue in the future.

This is a more common issue with Macs, but when it occurs on Windows machines the program is called Credential Manager as opposed to the Keychain Access program on Macs.

As always if you need help troubleshooting, please visit us at the Help Desk!

Tech Tip of the Week: 2FA Non-Illinois Recovery Email

This Tuesday’s Tech Tip is about 2-Factor Authentication!

Making sure you have a recovery email tied to your 2FA account that is not your Illinois email account is very important, since your Illinois email requires 2FA to log in. If you don’t do this before your phone meets tragedy, you may have issues setting up a new device because you need to use 2FA to access your 2FA account.

You can make sure you have a non-Illinois recovery email set up at this link!

Tech Tip of the Week: Tech Zone

The Tech Zone is the official computer store of the University of Illinois and is located in the Illini Union.

The Tech Zone sells and services various computers and can help make sure you have the technology to succeed no matter what your program may be. They even have a trade-in program to allow you to trade-in old Apple devices for a gift card.

If you are looking for new technology or your current technology is in need of repair, check out the Tech Zone!

Tech Tip of the Week: Halloween Edition

Pumpkins

Many of us carry our smartphones around every day but on Halloween, these little devices can be put to even more use than usual.

If you are going trick-or-treating, your phone can be an exceptional tool. You can use the GPS to plan your trick-or-treating route, you can use the flashlight to light up the streets after the sun goes down, and don’t forget to get some pictures with your phone’s camera to show off your costumes later. Outside of trick-or-treat, your phone’s app store gives you access to all sorts of Halloween-themed games!

And those are only a few ways your smartphone can play a role in the scariest day of the year.

If you’re interested in how your phone can be used to stay safe during Halloween, check out this news article.

But if you’re more interested in the spookier potential of your phone look no further than these novelty phone numbers you can call for a fright. Call at your own risk!

Tech Tip of the Week: Submit your Assignments as a PDF

Submitting your homework as a PDF allows it to be opened on any device, regardless of the operating system. Saving a file as a PDF is possible from most programs and locks the formatting, so you don’t have to worry about your file looking different when your professor opens the file on their computer.

Unless your professor requests a specific format for assignments, it is always a good idea to default to submitting assignments as a PDF!

Tech Tip of the Week: Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows

Some of the most common and helpful Windows keyboard shortcuts are:

Ctrl+C will copy a selected item to your clipboard
Ctrl+V will paste the item in the clipboard
Ctrl+Z will undo the previous action
Ctrl+P will print the current page/document
Ctrl+S will save the current page/document
Ctrl+F will open the search to find a term in the current page

A full list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows can be found here.

Tech Tip of the Week: Keyboard Shortcuts for Macs

Another Tuesday, another tech tip! Check out some of these shortcuts more Macs!

Some of the most common and helpful Mac keyboard shortcuts are:

Command+C will copy a selected item to your clipboard
Command+V will paste the item in the clipboard
Command+Z will undo the previous action
Command+P will print the current page/document
Command+S will save the current page/document
Command+F will open the search to find a term in the current page
Command+Spacebar will open the spotlight search

A full list of keyboard shortcuts for Macs can be found here.

Tech Tip of the Week: Experiencing Slow WiFi?

This week’s Tech Tip comes courtesy of Intel.

If you are struggling with slow WiFi, moving your router or optimizing your setting could be a quick fix. This could help some of the spotty audio issues that you experience during online classes!

Tech Tip of the Week: Having a Back-Up Plan

Imagine that you are about to submit your final research paper of the semester or an article to a journal that you have spent weeks, if not months, perfecting. All of the sudden your computer dies and won’t turn back on. You have lost all of your work and have to start all over again.

This Tech Tip of the Week is all about backing up your work to prevent this from happening.

Keeping important work on the cloud, such as in GoogleDrive, OneDrive, or Box, is a great way to back up your work because the cloud can be accessed from any computer.

Saving work to an external hard drive or USB flash drive is another way to make sure your files are saved to more than one location.

Tech Tip of the Week: Change at the iSchool

Students returning for the fall semester will definitely notice some changes to the iSchool. Many of them are physical changes to the building (new furniture! new offices! even *gasp* new buildings!?) but a lot of change comes from online!

Though the ITD office may have moved around, the Help Desk is a steadfast institution. You can still find us in the same place!

You WILL however find our Moodle in a different place. Courses were previously hosted on our homemade courses.ischool.illinois.edu. Starting this semester, you will join your classes from the campus-wide Moodle learn.illinois.edu.

This is an exciting change that we are all tackling together! There is one more potential change in the future but we will save that for another blog post.

Hope everyone is enjoying their last few weeks before the semester!