The Mighty PC

Office seemingly vanish in windows 10

After upgrading to Windows 10, some users have reported Office ‘vanishing' from their computers, which is obviously concerning.

But don't worry: Microsoft hasn't accidentally removed the productivity suite from your computer. The solution is to search for Office apps in the Start menu and then right-click on them to pin them to the Start menu.

The issue arises because Windows 10 does not automatically pin them, making it appear as if they have vanished.

Using an older Microsoft Office file

This irritation persists in Windows 10. (indeed, it affects all versions of Windows and Office). The solution, on the other hand, is relatively simple.

If you keep getting 'file is corrupt and cannot be opened' or 'unable to start correctly' warnings, open Command Prompt (again, by right-clicking the Start menu) and type:

icacls "%programfiles%\Microsoft Office 15" /grant *S-1-15-2-1:(OI)(CI)RX
If that doesn't work, try finding each corrupted file, right-clicking it, selecting Change, and then Online Repair.

Disable background apps to speed up your PC

While Windows 10 is a rapid operating system overall, it is not without its flaws. Background applications that keep running and eat up processing power are one of the major causes of any slowness. This is especially true of budget laptops.

In any case, it's simple to turn off any apps that are running in the background. Simply click the Start button on the left, then Settings, Privacy, and Background Apps. You can turn off any unwanted programs from here.

Fix your computer's slow booting

The simplest way to fix a sluggish PC boot is to reduce the number of apps that launch on startup, as having too many programs running when the computer boots makes the entire process much slower, especially on older hardware.

To remove those apps, press Control+Alt+Delete, then select Task Manager, then click the More Details link. Select the Startup tab from this menu. This section contains a list of all the apps that run when your computer boots up. Examine the list of enabled apps and remove any that you don't need – you can disable an app by right-clicking on it and selecting Disable.

Mind you, don't turn off Microsoft services or critical apps like antivirus. If you're not sure whether it's a good idea to disable an app, look it up on Google

Disable huge search field

Cortana takes up a lot of screen space in the taskbar, but if you're short on screen space, you can always disable Cortana's search box.

To adjust the assistant to a pop-up, right-click on the empty search box, hover over ‘Cortana,' and select ‘Hidden' from the fly-out menu. By selecting the ‘Show Cortana icon' option, users can keep Cortana in the taskbar as a (much smaller) standard icon.

Microsoft separated Cortana from the search box with the Windows 10 April 2019 Update, placing its icon to the right of the box. The search box can still be hidden by right-clicking it and selecting 'Search' then 'Hidden.'

Windows 10 upgrade - Having less storage space

You might not realize it, but whichever operating system you upgraded to Windows 10 from (assuming you didn't install the OS from scratch) still sits dormant on your PC for a while. This will, of course, reduce the amount of storage space available on your system drive.

To fix this, type "cleanup" into the Cortana/search box (next to the Start menu) and choose the Disk Cleanup utility from the results. When it finally appears after scanning your drive, look for a file called ‘Previous Windows Installation(s)' in the list of files you can clean up. Make sure this is checked, then click OK. Windows 10 will then delete the leftover files from the previous operating system, freeing up 5-10GB of space.

If your PC has more than one drive, you'll have to point Windows to the system drive where the previous OS was installed when you run Disk Cleanup (usually C:).