Computer Tricks and Secrets

The bank sends me monthly credit card statements as password-protected PDF files mostly because they contain personal information. I archive these PDFs into Google Drive but, because these files are protected with a password, the text isn’t searchable inside Drive. Also, each PDF file has a different password so it’s impossible to remember them and takes just too much to find these PDFs later. Removing Password from a PDF File Since the Google Drive is already protected with 2 layers of security – password and 2-factor authentication – it should be OK if we remove the password protection from PDF files before uploading them to Drive. Is there any software program available that can remove password protection from PDF files? One that doesn’t cost a dime and works on both Mac and Windows? Well the answer is yes and that too is already installed on your computer. It’s called Google Chrome. Google Chrome has a built-in PDF reader* and a PDF writer and we can combine the two features to rem...

The problem : You have documents, photos, music and other important files on the home computer. How can you “remotely access” these files from your office computer or, when you are travelling, from your mobile phone? The solution : The simplest solution would be that you copy all your data from the home computer on to a portable hard drive and carry it around but this is obviously a bit cumbersome approach as it requires you to manually sync the home computer and your portable disk. Access Files on your Computer from Anywhere There are couple of ways by which you can retrieve files stored on your home computer from anywhere else using a regular Internet connection. Option 1: Using Online Backup You can use an online backup service like  SugarSync ,  Carbonite ,  SkyDrive  or even  Dropbox  – they provide desktop utilities that will automatically upload files on your home computer to the Internet and you can then access these files through the web browser of any other Internet connected...

If you have to share a large file with someone over the Internet, there are generally two options – you can either put the file in an email message as an attachment or, if the file is too big to fit inside email, you can upload it to an file hosting service and then share the download links with the recipient. Best Services for Sending Large Files over the Internet Web email services like Gmail and Outlook allow you to send files up to 25 MB in size. For sending even bigger files, you can use a file-splitting utility like HJ-Split that will break the large file into smaller chunks of 25 MB each and you can send these in separate email messages. The recipient can download and join these parts to restore the original file. You can use online storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive for sending really big files. Microsoft OneDrive lets you upload single files up to 2 GB in size while the individual size limit is 1 TB (yes 1000 GB) in the case of Google Drive. For even bigge...

The PDF file format was originally created by Adobe in the early ’90s and it now the most popular format for exchanging all sorts of documents including presentations, CAD Drawings, invoices, government forms and other legal documents. There are several reasons why PDF file format is so popular. PDFs are generally more compact (smaller in size) than the source document and they preserve the original formatting. The content of a PDF file cannot be modified easily and you can prevent other users from printing or copying text from PDF documents. Also, you can open a PDF file on any computer or mobile device natively.  How to Edit PDF Files without Adobe Acrobat While PDF Files are “read only” by default, there are workarounds that will let you modify any PDF document for free without requiring the source files or any of the commercial PDF editing tools like Adobe Acrobat. We are primarily focusing on tools that let you alter the actual contents of a PDF files. If you are looking to manipu...