Tips for Non-IT Staff and Contractors

This page has been put together by our systems director in order to provide non-IT people with strategies for handling technology when IT is unavailable.

A solid chunk of any IT job is just googling things. Rather than spend hours figuring something out on your own, it is often far easier to just find someone else's solution with a quick Google search.

First, you need to figure out how to phrase your question to please the robot overlords of Google. Ensure you use as much detail as possible and use the correct names for everything. Include the version of the software you're working with.

Remember that anything within quotes will only return exact matches – if you misspell something or the page doesn't have the exact wording you used, it won't show up. You'll also want to search for something as generic as possible that will still return relevant results.

Let's pretend we're trying to print a donut recipe in Microsoft BakeMaster 2016 and keep getting an error message (“00×001: Not Enough Sugar”). Here is a Google search which is unlikely to generate useful results:

mircosopft donut software wont print

“Microsoft” is spelled wrong, we haven't specified the version of the software we're using, and we're just calling it “donut software.” We haven't included the error message so we're getting solutions for any number of issues, not just the one we're actually experiencing.

Here is a much better search:

“Microsoft BakeMaster 2016” print error 00×001 not enough sugar

We've put the name of the software in quotes so we'll only get results for our version (we can expand it to just “Microsoft BakeMaster” if we want to broaden our search later). We've also included the exact error message.

Once we google correctly, we've got to find the actual answers. These will usually be on a forum somewhere.

Avoid trolls and malware: never download things you find in your search results (e.g., “Run the free fixer tool to correct MICROSOFT BAKEMASTER 2016 PRINT ERROR 00×001 NOT ENOUGH SUGAR”), and don't edit the registry or delete system files unless you're pretty sure you know what you're doing.