Reader Questions, Part 1

Last week toward the end of the article regarding Google Lens, I stated you need to log into Google Chrome to perform a feature of Lens. That is needed to send text from Lens on your phone to your laptop or desktop. I received a few questions saying that sounds useful, but how do they log into Chrome? So, here you go.

There are several ways to login to your Google Account, but I will cover only one. First, check and see if your name or Gmail address appears when you hover over the head icon. It is next to the three vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner of the browser. If your information appears there, you are logged in. If not, I suggest you type, “accounts.google.com” into the address bar (now called Omnibar) and press enter. Login to your Gmail/Google Account. Once done, after a few seconds, the face icon you saw before will change and when hovered, it will show your Google account.

Next, I had someone email me last week about having problems logging into Facebook. I logged into their computer, of course, with their permission and help. And I looked around and spoke with them. They said they had three different FB accounts as they had the problem before. I thought it would be a simple fix. I would get them to hit the “Forgot password” link in the login area. FB would then email them a password reset button. It will send them an email with a link to click and reset their password. Easy! And that is what you should do.

However, I found that they no longer had the password to that email account and had not used it in years. So, we tried the other two…same thing. Every time they could not log into Facebook, they created a new email account and set up FB with that email. Then, when asked to log in again, months later, they could not remember the password. You got it, for either the FB account or their email accounts. The only way out was to create a fourth account and record BOTH passwords in a secure location and not lose them! The others will remain forever lost. They could contact Facebook’s help center, but with no passwords, it would be a long, painful process if resolved at all.

Finally, someone wrote that they were on vacation and wanted to tell friends about a great restaurant they went to. But they could not remember its name. Or even the location. What can they do to find it?

If they have previously logged into Google Maps, and have not cut off the timeline tracking, they are in luck. Having that feature on is the default, so if you have never changed it, which they did not, you are good. Open Google Maps. Easier on a computer but you can do it via a smartphone too. On your computer, look to the upper left corner of the maps and click on the three horizontal lines (menu) and look down the list and click on “Your timeline.” On your smartphone, do the same thing, but the menu is under your picture icon in the upper right corner. Click it. Once the timeline is open, set the date if you know it. It will then open a map of where you went that day, even the arrival and departure times. If you do not know the date, on a computer go back to maps and click the menu, then “Your places” then “Visited” and scroll down the list and see if you spot it. On your smartphone, just click on “Places” at the top. Your recent places will show up, and then at the bottom click on “View all visited places.” These will both give you several months of your travels.