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People come to me with lots of tech support questions about their computers, and most of the time I look like a wizard as I fix WiFi passwords or Mail issues.  “How do you do it?!” They exclaim with wonder beaming from their eyes as if my powers are a universal mystery never to be solved.  Well no more!

All Macs and Windows programs come with a little forgotten menu that offers some of the best answers for a plethora of how-to questions, technical quirks, and helpful guides.

Even in my day job, I use this long forgotten menu to find the best answers to the questions that get asked.  It’s curious that these menus don’t get used anymore. I often wonder if this is because we get inundated with so much information that the best options for assistance get overlooked.  Perhaps, this is due to Banner Blindness, a phenomenon we have developed whereby we subconsciously ignore banner-like information because we most commonly associate these areas of the screen with advertisements, but I digress.

On Windows: To open a program’s Help system:

•On the Help menu of the program, click the first item in the list, such as “View Help,” “Help Topics,” or a similar phrase. (This text will vary.)
– or –


Click the Help button (sometimes listed under the File.

Bonus Tip:You can also access Help by pressing F1. This function key opens Help in almost any program.


On a Mac: The Finder and most other Mac apps have a Help menu in the menu bar located at the very top of the screen in every app.

Next time you’re faced with a computer problem, check out the local help menus to see if they can answer your question and you will become your own Wizard!