All About the Built-In Backup in Windows 10

Ask @WinObs – Is There a Built-In Backup Option for Windows 10?

Q. I don’t want to be one of those people who learns too late that they should have backed up their home computer. I need a crash course in how to get my Windows 10 machine backed up regularly — preferably without requiring buying a backup service. Thanks!

A. “You don’t want to realize you need a backup when you actually need a backup.”

It happened to me once and I swore to never again be caught without a backup plan. It happened to my wife’s computer and that added even more stress to the situation because she lost some very important personal work when that solid-state drive failed on her PC.

Since those incidents, I started using features in Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service. That allowed me to sync our data directories including Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, etc., across all our devices.

While not a true backup, the service syncs changes between devices and the cloud, OneDrive does offer access to a recycle bin through the web portal along with file version history that would allow you to retrieve an inadvertently deleted or changed file.

Not everyone who uses Windows 10 also chooses to use OneDrive, so this option is not a viable solution for them. Even if you do use OneDrive like I do, you can use this built-in option for Windows 10 as a second level of protection for your important files.

While there are commercial programs available that would let you back up an image of your system, Windows 10 has options for restoring your system for a clean start, and these options allow you to keep your files as they are or remove everything for a complete fresh installation of Windows 10. It’s your choice.

That means backing up your files, the data you create during your work and other activities on Windows 10, is the critical need. File History in Windows 10 is built just for this purpose.

The key thing to remember as you get ready to use File History is that the backup storage target must be a separate storage location and not on your main system drive.

If your main drive fails, you will not be able to restore your file backups, basically voiding your backup efforts. Instead, use a second hard drive in your system, a network storage device that is plugged into your router or accessible through your local network, or an external drive that is plugged into your device. Any of those options will give you great flexibility for a backup target.

(I use a Western Digital MyCloud device that is on my home network and is used for archived data storage and my File History backups.)

Now that we have covered the basics – let’s go through the process of setting up File History backups on your device.

Setting Up File History Backup

The settings for backup in Windows 10 are located at Windows Settings > Update & Security > Backup and you begin by clicking the plus sign next to Add a drive.

This will open a window that will show you the available drives that can be used for File History backup. In this instance, I had already gone into my Western Digital MyCloud device and created a folder that is publicly accessible across my network called FileHistory.

After selecting that folder, the configuration was completed in the background.

Note: Do not be concerned if you do not see the directory you selected on this main settings page – it does not show up there for some reason. It would be a nice touch if it did though just as a confirmation that it has been properly setup as the backup target.

Once you have added the drive target, just select the More options link on the main Backup settings page.

You can now see your selected drive is featured at the top of this setting page. The overview also shows the size of your backup and the date/time of the last backup. There is also a button to manually initiate a backup. I went ahead and did this to get the first backup completed.

You can configure how often you want the file backup process to run in a range from every 10 minutes to once daily.

Your choice here will impact network activity, so if you want to minimize that, consider the backup frequency in your choice. I just use the daily option to minimize that concern.

The second configuration choice is the retention period of your file history backup. Once again, this choice is very dependent on your target drive size and the amount of data that will be backed up over time.

I opted to just keep the backups for three months as that is plenty of time for me to recover a deleted/changed file in most circumstances.

The next set of choices for your file backup is which folders will be monitored for changes and subsequently have those files backed up based on your periodicity settings.

Windows 10 makes some fairly logical choices here and pre-selects what are common sense choices such as Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc. However, you should review this list and make sure any non-typical folders that you might have data saved in are also selected for backup.

To remove a folder just click on its entry in the list and click the Remove button.

Note: OneDrive directories are selected by default so if you want to leave those as they are,  just remove them from this list. This is especially critical if you have a lot of data already stored in that cloud. Since OneDrive has file version history and a recycle bin in the cloud, these directories will be well protected anyway.

If you scroll towards the bottom of all the directories there is also an option to exclude specific ones from backing up through file history.

There is also an option down here to stop using your designated target drive for backup. This will not impact the file history backups that are already completed. This comes in handy if you choose to retain your file backups permanently and need to replace that drive once it fills up with backup data.

Next, I will show you the steps for restoring a file(s) that have been previously backed up. To get started just click on the Restore files from a current backup link at the bottom of the Backup options settings page shown in the image above.

Restoring Files from File History Backup

 

Clicking that Restore files from a current backup link at the bottom of the Backup options settings page will open this dialog.

Use the arrow keys on either side of the large green button at the bottom of this dialog to move between your various file history backups until you find the one you need.

At this point you just drill down into the directory that contains the file you want to restore.

Once you find the file you want to restore, just select it like you would in File Explorer then click the green button at the bottom of the dialog.

That will result in a pop-up dialog box to confirm you want to replace the existing file with this previous version. This dialog will be familiar if you have ever worked with files in Windows 10 before, so you just confirm you want to replace the existing file and the backed-up version will be copied into the existing one’s location for you.

That is the ins and outs of the entire process. File History backup is a set and forget feature because once you have everything configured it works automatically in the background to protect your files. These are my favorite kinds of things because backups should be an automatic thing and not left to our own memory to initiate the backup process.

One last note about backups – test them every once in a while, to make sure they are working properly because having backups are great but backups that do not work are not really backups at all.

Good luck and good backups!

Master Macros in Microsoft Office

You can automate a host of time-consuming tasks via macros.

Do you find yourself running the same laborious and repetitive commands and tasks in Microsoft Word or Excel? There must be a better way, you say to yourself. And there is, with macros.

Through a macro, you can record or create a series of commands and tasks in a Microsoft Office application. Then, whenever you want to run those commands, you just trigger the macro. You can create macros to automate just about anything in a program like Word or Excel — apply special formatting, change the layout, insert objects.

Macros can sound intimidating if you’ve never ventured into their territory. They’re stored as mini programs using the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language. But you don’t need to be a programmer to use macros. You can record the macro by performing the various commands step by step. You can then edit the macro to make any changes.

Let’s check out how to use macros to save time in Microsoft Office.

Macros are available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The process works the same across all three applications. So once you master macros in one program, you can use the same process in the others. As usual, I’m using Office 2016 here, but the steps for creating, editing, and using macros are the same for the past few versions of Office.

Let’s launch Word to kick things off. Open any document with text. We’ll try a relatively simple macro to start, one that I often use. I often give certain documents a specific font, point size, line spacing, and justification, and I can accomplish all those tasks in a single macro.

Click on the View menu and then click on the Macros button. Select the option to Record Macro.

Now, follow these steps.

1. At the Record Macro window, type a name for your macro. The name must start with a letter, but the remaining 79 characters can include numbers if necessary. I don’t recommend a long name; short macro names are easier to use. In this case, I might create a name like FullJustLayout. You can assign a macro to a button or a keyboard shortcut, but we’ll do that separately.
2. Type a description for your macro so you know exactly what it does. You can opt to store your macro in the default template for all documents or just your current document. Unless there’s a reason you want to restrict the macro to your current document, keep this setting at All Documents.
3. Click OK, and now the fun begins.
4. Select your entire document by pressing Ctrl+A.
5. Now perform each of the following tasks one after another:
   1. Click on the Home menu.
   2. Change the font to Calibri and the point size to 12.
   3. Click on the small arrow in the Paragraph section to access the Paragraph Settings window.
   4. Change the space for After to 12 points and the line spacing to Multiple at 1.15.
   5. Finally, change the alignment to Justified.
   6. Click OK to close the Paragraph Settings window.
6. Click anywhere in the document to turn off the selection and then make sure your cursor is at the top of the screen.
7. Click on the View menu, select the Macros button, and click on the option to Stop Recording.

Now open a different document in Word, one without any of the formatting we used for the macro.

Click on the View menu, select the Macros button, and click on View Macros. You should see your macro listed and selected.

Click on the Run command, and the macro applies all the stored formatting and layout changes to your document.

Now depending on how the document was originally formatted, you may see too much spacing between each paragraph. That would occur with this macro if your document had no spacing between the paragraphs and you had pressed the Enter key to start each new paragraph. No problem. We’ll get rid of those extra paragraph returns. We’ll use a Find and Replace routine to accomplish that but we’ll record it as a macro to automate the steps. And this time we’ll try a quicker way to record and stop the macro.

Instead of going through the Macros button, click on the small macro recording button on the bottom status bar, the button to the right of the word count or page numbers.

At the Record Macro window, type a name and description for the macro and then click OK. Perform the following tasks one after another.

1. Move your cursor to the top of the document. Switch to the Home Ribbon if it’s not displayed.
2. Click on the Replace button.
3. At the Find and Replace window, click on the More button. Make sure your cursor is in the Find what field.
4. Click on the Special button and select Paragraph Mark from the menu.
5. Repeat that step so that you have two paragraph marks in the field.
6. Click on the Replace with field and insert one paragraph mark here.
7. Then click on the Replace All button. The Find and Replace tool should replace all instances of two paragraph marks with one. Find and Replace tells you how many replacements were made.
8. Click OK to close that message.

Close the Find and Replace window. Move to the top of your document. To stop the macro recording, click on the black button on the bottom status bar.

Going through the Macros menu to trigger a macro is a clumsy process. Instead, you can put a macro on any Ribbons and/or on the Quick Access toolbar. You can also assign a keyboard shortcut to a macro. Performing those actions in the Record Macro window is the easiest option. But you can also do all that after the fact by customizing the Ribbon and customizing the Quick Access Toolbar. Here’s how.

1. Right-click on the Home Ribbon and click on the command to Customize the Ribbon.
2. At the window to “Customize the Ribbon and keyboard shortcuts,” make sure the Home Ribbon is selected in the right pane.
3. Click on the New Group button. Make sure the new group is selected.
4. Click on the Rename button and change the name to Macros.
5. Click on the dropdown menu under “Choose commands from” in the left pane and change the view to Macros. You should see the two macros you created.
6. Click on the first one in the list and then click on the Add button.
7. Do the same for the second one. You can rename the Ribbon buttons for the macros and change their icons.
8. Click on one of the macros and click on the Rename button.
9. Type a new name for the macro button and select a different icon. Click OK.
10. Do the same for the other macro.

Buttons for your macros appear on the Home Ribbon.

To create a keyboard shortcut for each macro, follow these directions.

1. Click on the Customize button next to Keyboard shortcuts at the bottom of the left pane. Under Categories in the Customize Keyboard window, scroll down the list and select Macros.
2. Your two macros appear in the Macros window. Select one.
3. Click in the Press new shortcut key field and press the keys on your keyboard that you want to use as the shortcut, for example, Ctrl+Shift+R. Make sure you don’t assign a shortcut that’s already used by a Windows or Office command.
4. Click the Assign button. Do the same for the other macro.
5. Close the Customize Keyboard window. Pressing one of the new keyboard shortcuts triggers the respective macro.
6. At the window to “Customize the Ribbon and keyboard shortcuts,” change the selection to Quick Access toolbar.
7. You can now repeat the steps you used to add the macros to the Ribbon, this time adding them to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Finally, what if you want to edit the code for a macro to modify any elements? Even if you don’t know VBA, you can make certain changes and rename the macro.

Click on the View menu, select the Macros button, and click on the option to View Macros. Here you can delete a macro.

But we want to edit its code and change its name. Select the macro and click on Edit. The code for each macro appears. For the FullJustLayout macro we created, you can see lines of code for the font, point size, and other attributes. To change those, just replace the existing font name or point size with a different name or size.

To change the name of the macro, look for the line of code at the beginning that says: Sub [the name of macro] (). Delete the existing name of the macro but don’t remove the Sub and () items. Type the new name for your macro. Press Ctrl+S when done to save the macro with your changes and the new name. Close the VBA window.

Editing or renaming a macro doesn’t affect any existing buttons or keyboard shortcuts. So you can run your edited macro from the Macros window, from the Ribbon, from the Quick Access Toolbar, or from your keyboard shortcuts.