MakeUseOf - Productivity

4 ridiculously useful Excel tools Microsoft barely tells you exist

Yadullah Abidi — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 20:00:13 GMT

Excel has been around for decades; somewhere along the way, Microsoft buried a handful of genuinely brilliant features so deep in menus that most people never stumble onto them. These aren't obscure formulas or power-user shortcuts either. They're built-in tools that could save you hours if you just knew where to look.

I typed three semicolons into Excel and found its strangest formatting trick

Yasir Mahmood — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 14:30:13 GMT

I keep a content calendar that ranks what I pitch next, and the ranking leans on columns nobody else needs to see. Every cell in that sheet carries a number format, and most of the time picking the right number format for each column is about making figures readable.

I stopped opening my laptop on airplanes after discovering AR display glasses

Brady Snyder — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 11:00:13 GMT

I travel a lot, and I'm constantly searching for ways to replicate the productivity of my desk setup while on the go. Originally, I used portable monitors to create a dual-monitor setup in coffee shops and hotel rooms. I eventually upgraded to an Apple Vision Pro headset, which has a Mac Virtual Display feature that turns my laptop into a larger-than-life ultrawide screen. Augmented reality (AR) display glasses aren't as good as your laptop display or portable monitor on paper, but their portability and convenience has me picking them up over objectively better options.

The delimiter trick that stops Claude from asking questions when you just want a quick answer

Saikat Basu — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:00:13 GMT

I was researching a chapter outline for a book project when Claude stopped to ask me three questions about the book's direction. This is normal behavior for Claude when it pauses to check with us instead of just rushing ahead. The fix isn't a magic keyword or a trick. It's a single instruction you add to your prompt that tells Claude exactly how to handle a context-poor prompt. It even happens with perfect prompts it perceives as ambiguous. Once you make it part of the instructions, Claude stops interviewing you and starts working.

There's only one Control Panel dialog left that Windows Settings hasn't replaced

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:30:13 GMT

Windows 11 has gotten surprisingly good at steering me away from Control Panel. If I right-click This PC and choose Properties, I end up in Settings. If I open the old System page in Control Panel, Windows redirects me there too. But if I start looking for environment variables, pagefile controls, or crash dump settings, Windows still sends me back to System Properties, with its cramped buttons, crowded tabs, and unmistakably old-school Windows design.

Amazon just gave Kindle owners two new reasons to look at Kobo

Oliver Haslam — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 17:30:13 GMT

Amazon has pushed a key change to the use of DRM on its Kindle platform that has users up in arms. And the timing couldn't be any worse, with an unknown change to the way popular ebook library app Libby works also causing uproar in the Kindle community. And both changes have the potential to push Kindle owners towards alternatives like Kobo.

55+ PDF tools fit inside this Docker container — my files never leave the house

Tashreef Shareef — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 14:30:13 GMT

If you deal with sensitive PDF documents, you probably don't want to use a tool that would send them to a third-party server over the internet. That makes self-hosted PDF apps a great alternative.

I checked my Claude Code usage and found four hidden token drains I never knew about

Abhijith N Arjunan — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:00:13 GMT

I love almost everything about Claude Code, but I hate how quickly Claude Code sessions eat through my session limits! Most people think their prompts are the only reason the agentic coding tool consumes tokens, but that's not entirely true.

I let temporary files pile up for months and recovered 3.3GB without breaking anything

Isaac Akinleye — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 17:30:13 GMT

Earlier this month, my laptop crashed during a Windows update. The reason wasn't down to a bad patch or some driver conflict; it was because my system drive was dangerously low on space at the wrong time. I had to move about 35GB of files just to get some breathing room again.

Before you install another Docker container, clean up these 6 network basics

Gregory Gibson — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:30:13 GMT

One of the most dangerous things about Docker is how easy it is to just make another container. All I need is a Compose file, a published port, and a few seconds later I’ve got another service running.