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by Steve Galloway | Apr 14, 2026 | Articles and help

Click open the Index headers below to browse FAQ

Our support articles address the most common issues we deal with “in the field” about Windows, Microsoft 365 Business, web server support, and web design. Click open the accordion sections below to look for self-serve help. Often, issues rely on a knowledge of IT concepts and language. Also, Microsoft, cPanel, and other software houses featured in these articles often update practice notes and procedures without notice. We review our pages regulalry, however you are advised to contact us for further help about these articles especially concerning issues around sovereign account identity and Multifactor Authentication (MFA).

Microsoft Windows 11

Microsoft 365 setup, licensing and user management

Microsoft 365, Exchange Online and Outlook

Microsoft 365 configuration and user tips and tricks

The following articles can be found using <Search> or scrolling through our list of articles. Procedures may have changed since and therefore this content is either being eidted or deprecated. So, although we are editing this content, you might still find useful information to help with issues.

– Exchange Online – room and equipment resources
– Reset Office 365 password expiration policy
– Exchange Email – EOP antivirus/spam
– Exchange Online Protection – EOP
– Microsoft 365 Exchange Email – data leakage & loss protection
– Microsoft ActiveSync

cPanel - web server | email |DNS

cPanel - Sitejet web design software

Business PC Recovery Tools Explained: Windows Recovery Drive vs Manufacturer Tools

by Steve Galloway | Apr 12, 2026 | Articles and help

Plan for recovery

Managing your IT at workstation or even network level is about preparing for failure, rather than waiting for a problem. PC recovery tools play an important part in ongoing hardware management.

When business owners and professionals choose a laptop, the conversation usually starts and ends with price. A £250 generic Windows laptop appears to do the same job as an £800 business‑grade device. Both run Windows. Both open email. Both connect to the cloud. However, although the price looks great, the reality does not hit until the computer develops a problem. Suddenly, PC recovery tools that could remedy a problem are note available to cinch an issue.

The difference only becomes Windows or hardware problems happen. In conventional offices, ‘work” computers tend to work with finite core applications only. Home office computers do not enjoy this discipline: a user often uses a computer for recreational and social functions that would not be tolerated in an office network. This makes home office computers more difficult to diagnose and remedy. So, recovery tools SHOULD be a prime consideration when buying a computer for home/small office use.

While Windowes provides recovery tools to look after itself, inexpensive generic computers do not usually provide manufacturer hardware diagnostics and recovery available to business class hardware.

Business PC recovery tools exist for:

failed updates
storage errors
firmware problems
full operating system corruption.

Understanding how these tools work—and why higher‑quality systems manage failure better—can significantly reduce downtime, data loss, and support costs.

Click open the headers below to learn more about how Manufacturer hardware recovery tools work with Windows Recovery to provide the best capability for restoring PC faults. Support options are available for professional assistance. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

How the Windows Recovery Drive Helps Recover Windows

The Windows Recovery Drive is a Microsoft‑provided safety net. Created using a USB stick, it contains the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), which can be used when Windows will not start.

At a basic level, Windows recovery tools allow you to:

Repair startup issues
Roll back recent updates
Reset Windows while keeping or removing user files
Access advanced tools such as Command Prompt for manual repair

For many home users, this is sufficient. Windows recovery is generic by design. It is meant to work on almost any compatible PC regardless of manufacturer.

However, that strength is also its limitation. Windows recovery focuses solely on the operating system. It does not deeply understand the hardware it runs on, nor does it diagnose whether Windows failed because the hardware itself is deteriorating.

The Limits of Windows‑Only Recovery

When a system will not boot, Windows Recovery (see our article here) assumes that:

The storage device is healthy
Firmware is intact
Drivers can be reapplied later
Hardware faults are unlikely

In a business environment, or in circumstances where users provide consultative or professional/advisory work, these assumptions are optimistic. Instead, in keeping with professionally managed network, it should be anticipated that IT will fail and plan for the eventuality.

If a failing SSD (hard disk drive), memory error, or firmware issue is the cause of the failure, Windows recovery may repeatedly reinstall an operating system that cannot remain stable. This leads to extended downtime and escalating support effort.

This is where manufacturer PC recovery tools from the become important. This kind of utility wraps around Windows Recovery, and apart from providing early warnings for hardware failure, these kinds of utilities are often capable of reinstalling the manufacturer’s OEM version of Windows. This is useful in situations where Windows might have been optimized for the computer’s hardware performance.

Manufacturer Recovery Tools: Beyond Windows Recovery

Major PC manufacturers add their own recovery layers on top of Windows. Manufacturer tools are tightly integrated with firmware, drivers, and hardware diagnostics.

Suppliers like Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, and other mature brands supply spohisticated diagnostics, early warning, and recovery tools for computers which start in intermedate price ranges and above. Availability varies on specifications so do check before buying,

For the purposes of this article we will refer to Dell’s SupportAssist OS Recovery. Dell’s bundle operates similarly to other major manufacturer solutions.

What Manufacturer Recovery Tools Typically Provide

Manufacturer or PC recovery tools like Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery typically feature:

Pre‑boot hardware diagnostics to test storage, memory, CPU, and motherboard
OEM‑aware Windows repair that understands the exact device model
Data backup tools before reinstallation
Factory image restore matched to the device
Firmware‑level recovery when disks or partitions are damaged

These utilities are beyond Windows Recovery capability. Manufacturer PC recovery tools operate outside Windows and, in some cases, partially inside the computer’s own system firmware. This allows recovery to begin even when Windows is completely unusable. In the right hands, this software can recover computers that might be otherwise determined to be unviable to repair.

Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery dashboard

Manufacturers provide utilities like Dell’s SupportAssist OS Recovery which practively monitor performance and provide recovery tools not available in Microsoft Recovery Drive.

Why This Matters for Professional Users

From a cost perspective, the difference rarely shows up on day one. It appears later, when a device fails during a critical work period.

Without strong business PC recovery tools:

Diagnosis takes longer
Data recovery is riskier
Rebuilds become manual and error‑prone
Support costs rise quickly

With manufacturer PC recovery tools in place:

Hardware faults are identified early
Recovery paths are clearer
Downtime is measured in hours, not days
Devices can often be restored remotely or with minimal intervention

What looks like a £550 saving at purchase can easily become a £1,000 loss during a single serious failure.

The Strategic Difference Between Generic and Business‑Grade PCs

The real difference between a £250 laptop and an £800 business‑grade device is not performance. It is survivability.
Business‑grade systems are designed with the expectation that:

Failures should be expected
Mission critical devices must be recovered quickly
Data must be protected
Support needs to scale

These expectations are embodied in better business PC recovery tools for professional-level equipment, not just stronger materials or better keyboards.

Summary

Microsoft Windows’ Recovery Drive remains useful and should still be part of a basic disaster‑recovery plan. However, it is only one part of a comprehensive disaster recovery approach.

Manufacturer PC recovery tools—such as Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery—wrap around Windows recovery to provide diagnostics, data protection, and device‑specific restoration that Windows alone cannot offer.

For businesses, or users who rely on their computer for time-constrained productivity, choosing devices with strong recovery ecosystems is not a luxury. It is a practical investment in continuity, resilience, and predictable support costs.

If you are managing systems for the long term, recovery capability matters just as much as processor speed or storage size.

Comstat provides independent advice on business IT choices that reduce risk, protect continuity, and support long‑term growth. If you need help configuring email, please get in touch, or use our contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here .

Why Professional IT Support Still Matters in the Age of AI

by Steve Galloway | Mar 18, 2026 | Articles and help

AI Helps — But It Does Not Replace Professional IT Support

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a useful tool in homes and small offices. It can answer questions, suggest fixes, and help diagnose problems. But AI does replace professional IT support, because small‑business systems are complex. They involve networks, security, backups, mobile devices, shared data, cloud services, and more. These parts work together, and a wrong change in one area often creates new problems somewhere else.

AI is excellent at offering general guidance. It gives ideas and helps people learn. However it answers only the question it is asked. IT problems are often nuanced and an evident problem may be grounded in an unexpected cause. So, most DIY attempts fail because the real problem was not the one AI was asked to fix. When the wrong question is asked, the answer—no matter how clever—cannot solve the issue. That is where professional IT support makes the difference.

Click open the headers below to learn more about how expert guidance still matters in IT management..

You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

AI Does Not Replace Human Oversight

You would not fly a plane without a pilot

If you tried to fly a commercial airliner by yourself with AI to guide you, it wouldn’t end well. Nobody would feel safe flying a commercial aircraft without a trained captain. Any one system can be easily understood. However all systems work in tandem. This needs nuanced understanding because managing the integrated whole is complex, and the consequences of mistakes are too serious. So, even with autopilot and advanced onboard computers, airlines still rely on skilled pilots for oversight.

Business networks are similarly complex. While livers might not be at stake, the income that a business owner derives from a computer network might be the means with a livelihood depends. A network with 35 connected devices – not unusual in today’s world – may include laptops, phones, IoT devices, printers, routers, switches, cloud services, and security tools. One wrong “fix” can disable access, expose data, or break something else that worked perfectly before. This is why professional IT support remains essential.

Would you repair your own car engine using AI?

Most drivers today cannot repair a modern car. The engine uses an array of sensors, electronics, and software. AI can help diagnose a possible fault. You might use AI to find pointers that might save an engineer diagnosis time on the workshop floor, but you would still take the car to your trained mechanic to fix it. Changing a brake pad yourself when the actual problem was a faulty ABS sensor might cause a fatal accident.

The same is true for IT. AI might suggest a setting to check, but it cannot look at logs or understand your computer setup (even something as simple as the difference between Windows Personal or Windows Professional). Nor can it anticipate your broader context within a network, or foresee the side‑effects of a change. Only someone who already knows your systems, your history, and your business can do that.

Root Cause: A Cached Notebook Structure on Android

OneNote Mobile caches each notebook’s structure when it is first opened. It continues to use that cached structure until the app is forced to refresh it. Even when new sections are added on desktop or web, Android may not notice new sections unless the OneNote cache on the Android handset is fully cleared.

In this case, the “Charlie’s Notebook” entry was an old OneDrive notebook created years earlier when the user first setup OneNote. Android had continued treating it as the default notebook. The result was:

Quick Notes were sent to the wrong notebook
New sections like 2026 never appeared
Notebook colours stayed out of date
Recent Notes showed pages from two different notebooks

All of this pointed toward a stale cached notebook that needed a proper reset.

The Hidden Cost of DIY Fixes

Small businesses often try to fix their own IT problems to save money. Unfortunately, DIY fixes tend to compound issues with unforeseen problems. One change leads to another, and by the time professional help is called, the recovery work is more difficult—and more expensive—than the original issue ever was.

Example – “my email does not work”.

We often deal with email problems. Often, we are asked to fix a computer because email does not work. The client has spent time trying to diagnose ApplMail or Outlook. However, in the example most recently dealt with, the client had note renewed a domain name. For whatever reason, AI did not detect this. The problem had nothing to do with the owner’s computer, and some days of email were lost (and time) because the problem was elsewhere.

AI does not always help

This is why many small businesses end up needing professional IT support more than ever, not less. AI has encouraged people to try more fixes, but these attempts are often made without understanding the underlying cause of the problem.

Solution – IT professionals solve problems

We do not offer ad-hoc support. Instead, we audit your network and needs firstg to establish benchmarks the benchmarks we rely on to plan ongoing support and deal with issues as they inevitably develop. IT constantly develops, and unfortunately this brings problems that nobody can anticipate. Disciplined planning and management helps to build a reliable network.

Our experience with field work since the beginning of 2025 underscores this. We have been asked to remedy more problems than ever before, and usually problems are exacerbated by unfortunate fixes that addressed the wrong issue.

What Professional IT Support Delivers That AI Cannot

Considered and contextual diagnosis, not guesswork
- AI answers your question. An IT professional identifies the actual problem
Preventative care
- Professionals maintain systems proactively, reducing faults before they appear
Security with accountability
- Incorrect settings can expose data. AI does not take responsibility for outcomes
System‑wide insight
- Fixing one device can affect every other device. Only human oversight can manage these relationships safely
Business continuity
- Downtime costs money. Professional IT support reduces the risk of outages and speeds recovery when issues arise

Professional IT support ensures that your network runs smoothly, safely, and with confidence. If you would like help exploring support options, feel free to get in touch, or use out contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

Summary

The important point here is that when a notebook has changed significantly on OneNote desktop or Web, Android and Apple may need a full cache reset to see the updated structure.

This problem is not uncommon. Unfortunately, users often shrug their shoulders when this kind of sync fails and OneNote loses its utility as. Not unreasonably, users are not sure where to look for the problem or even what the problem is. Happily, functionality is easily fixed and this article should help you understand that OneNote caches on mobile devices can be easily remedied.

If you would like help exploring OneNote features implementing OneNote across devices, feel free to get in touch, or use out contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

How to Search by Category in Outlook (Using Favourites & Search Folders)

by Steve Galloway | Mar 16, 2026 | Articles and help

Using Categories to search for emails

Searching your email by category is a fast way to stay organised, especially for volume email users and if you rely on colour‑coded workflows. Outlook now offers two reliable ways to do this. The simplest method uses categories which you have saved as favourites in your Outlook folder pane.

For more complex needs, Search Folders still offer the most control. This guide shows Microsoft’s recommended approaches and explains what currently works on Windows, web, and Mac.

Hot Tip!! This guidance is written for “New” Outlook. Outlook Classic is scheduled for deprecation in the medium term.

Click open the headers below to learn more about how you can use categories to simplify your searches in Outlook. You can jump to associated articles about Outlook Categories here:

You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

1. The fastest method: using favourited categories in New Outlook

If your goal is simply to search by category in Outlook, the quickest method is to favourite the categories you use most.

How it works

When you favourite a category, it appears in the left‑hand folder pane. Selecting a favourited category instantly filters your mailbox to show every message tagged with that category. It behaves like a dynamic “saved search” without requiring any setup.

Why use this method?

Instant filtering without typing a query
Always up to date as new mail arrives
No Search Folder required
Works in:
- New Outlook for Windows
- Outlook on the web
- New Outlook for Mac

Find out how to create Outlook Categories in this article.

2. When you need more: use Search Folders for complex searches

Favourited categories handle single‑category scenarios well. But if you need multi‑criteria filtering—for example:

Category + specific sender
Category + unread items
Category + timeframe
OR combinations (e.g., Category A or Category B)

…then a Search Folder is still the best solution.

What is a Search Folder?

A Search Folder is a virtual folder that stores criteria and updates in real time. It works like a reusable saved search. Although the new Outlook does not let users “save a search,” it does support Search Folders.

Outlook provides a saved searchesd folder in your folder pane to which you can add search folders.

Creating a Search Folder (New/Classic Outlook for DESKTOP)

Right click on Saved Searches Folder → select New (or Add) Search Folder
Choose a preset, or select Create a custom Search Folder
Select Criteria to define filters such as:
1. Category
2. From:
3. Subject
4. Keywords
5. Date
Name the folder clearly (e.g., Finance, Categorised, 2026 invoices) and Save.

in this example, a category caslled “Outstanding” has been selected. More attributes can be added to filter your search further.

Add your saved search to Favourites

For extra convenience you can make your saved search a Favourite. This puts a shortcut towards the top of your folder pane near Inbox, Sent, etc. The folder still resides in your Saved Searches folder.

Outlook on the Web: mixed support

Outlook on the web supports Search Folders at the mailbox level, but it does not allow you to pin them to Favourites in the same way the Windows desktop app does.

Practical notes:

Search Folders still work and remain visible
You cannot favourite saved search folders
For quick access, Microsoft recommends using favourited categories instead

If you need to reliably search by category in Outlook on the web, favouriting categories remains the simpler option.

New Outlook for Mac: saved searches exist, but pinning does not

At time of writing, Outlook for Mac allows users to create search queries and save them. However, adding saved searches or Search Folders to the Favourites pane is not supported. Drag‑and‑drop behaviour sometimes appears to work, but it is inconsistent and not officially documented.

Mac users who need fast access to tagged mail should rely on favourited categories until Microsoft expands this feature.

Practical tips for smoother workflows

Use meaningful names
- For Search Folders, name them for purpose: e.g., Client Work – Categorised or Finance – Outstanding.
Combine categories with other filters
- Ideal when you need more than a simple category filter.
Keep the list clean
- Remove old Search Folders to reduce clutter.
Use categories as your backbone
- Especially if your primary aim is to search by category in New Outlook
Plan a taxonomy that can be managed over time
- planning a structure helps to reduce bloat and redundant categories. Also, a documented taxonomy helps colleagues who may need to duplicate categories – remember. categories operate at a user level, not an organisational level.

Summary

If you want to search by category in Outlook, the fastest and most widely supported method is simply to favourite your categories and use the dynamic filter. This works across Windows, web, and Mac.

For advanced filtering, Windows users can rely on Search Folders, which remain the best way to create a complex, reusable saved search. On the web and Mac, Search Folder support is more limited, so categories offer the most consistent experience.

If you need help or want advice about planning a category taxonomy, please get in touch, or use our contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

How cPanel Spam Filters Work: Managing Email Protection with SpamAssassin and BoxTrapper

by Steve Galloway | Mar 15, 2026 | Articles and help, Web Server

About cPanel Spam Filters

Email security matters more than ever, and cPanel users rely heavily on spam filters to keep inboxes clean. Understanding how cPanel spam filters work—and how to adjust them—helps ensure real messages get through while junk is blocked. In this guide, we’ll explain how spam filters evaluate email, how you can manage those settings in cPanel, and how SpamAssassin compares with cPanel’s stricter tool, BoxTrapper.

Apache SpamAssassin is the no. 1 Open Source anti-spam platform giving system administrators and users a filter to classify email and block spam (unsolicited bulk email).

Click open the headers below to learn more about how to enable and manage SpamAssassin and learn about the stricter Boxtrapper utility which is also available. Support options are available for professional assistance. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

How cPanel Spam Filters Score Incoming Email

cPanel spam filters offer a scoring a scoring system that evaluates every incoming email message. Each email is analysed for spam indicators like:

suspicious wording
forged headers
missing SPF records
whether incoming email is “whitelisted” by the targeted recipient
unusual formatting and dozens of other signals

Each factor adds positive or negative points.

By default, your instance of SpamAssasin uses a default threshold of 5 when filtering is enabled. If the combined score of an email exceeds this value, the message is flagged as spam and is either moved to the Junk folder or discarded, depending on how the account is configured.

Because the calculation is cumulative, even legitimate emails can occasionally reach a high score—especially those containing marketing language, attachments, or forwarded content. This makes it important for users to tune cPanel spam filters to match their needs. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for example, would relaxe their threshold to 8, to permit end users to allow their own servers to deal with arguable decisions.

rDNS, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all protocols that help “authenticate” valid emails. While email “just” works out of the box, without these services email that YOU send to others can be compromised because tools like SpamAssassin use these configurations to test email you send to recipients. These settings are often considered to be irrelevant by casual users because they are troublesome to implement and email seems to send when a user dispatches it. The problem is that if you send inadequately authenticated email, you usually do not know that it has been dropped by a spam filter. You can read more about authenticating your outgoing email in our article, Configure SPF, rDNS, DKIM, and DMARC for email.

Managing SpamAssassin Settings in cPanel

SpamAssassin is the default filtering engine in your cPanel environment, and it gives users fine‑grained control without requiring technical expertise. You can enable or disable the filter from the your cPanel home page in Email → Spam Filters panel.

Open spam filters in your cPanel web server console

Adjusting the Spam Threshold

You will find a slider or a numerical box where you can adjust the spam score threshold in your Spam Filter preferences. Lower numbers make the filter more aggressive, while higher numbers reduce the chance of blocking legitimate emails. Users keep the threshold between 3 and 7, depending on how much mail they receive and how sensitive their workflow is.

The setting depends on your needs. Also, the setting needs periodic review. Above, we saw that ISPs use a more relaxed spam control of 8. Retailers, too, might need a more relaxed setting to accept orders from poorly authenticated email senders. In these sorts of situations, you would probably use locally implemented filtering to better target invoming email. For instance, a retailer might want to approve incoming email whose subject header or textual content matches “new order” or other metric.

Users typically configure their spam filtering like this – click open to adjust tolerance

Auto‑Delete and Spam Box

SpamAssassin also includes:

Spam Box, which moves suspected spam into a special folder
Auto‑Delete, which permanently removes messages over a certain score
Whitelist and blacklist settings, allowing total control over trusted and untrusted senders

These optional tools give you more precision without requiring deeper configuration.

By adjusting these controls, you ensure that cPanel spam filters behave appropriately for your daily email habits.

SpamAssassin vs BoxTrapper: Which Is Better?

Your email server provides another spam filtering tool called BoxTrapper. The two solutions take different approaches to spam filtering.

SpamAssassin

Uses an automated scoring system
Requires no interaction from the sender
Works quietly in the background
Allows whitelisting and custom scoring rules

SpamAssassin is designed for ease of use and minimal disruption while still providing strong protection via its cPanel spam filters.

BoxTrapper

Uses challenge–response verification
Sends an automatic confirmation email to unfamiliar senders
Requires the sender to take action before their message is delivered
Filters nearly all spam because automated bots cannot confirm

BoxTrapper is far more aggressive than SpamAssassin. It is extremely effective—but at the cost of convenience. Some businesses and individuals avoid it because legitimate senders may ignore the confirmation request, leading to missed messages. You can find out more about BoxTrapper in this article.

For everyday users, cPanel spam filters based on SpamAssassin offer the right balance. For those facing severe spam issues and who can tolerate the extra step for new contacts, BoxTrapper provides nearly complete protection.

Summary

Most users will be well‑served by SpamAssassin’s flexible scoring system and simple management options. It provides reliable filtering via cPanel spam filters while allowing legitimate messages to pass through with minimal effort.

If you require near‑zero spam at the cost of extra friction for new senders, BoxTrapper may be the better choice. This would be desirable if you need to limit incoming email to known senders and you need to minimize the risk of phishing or other attempted attacks.

Both systems reflect the core strengths of cPanel spam filters, and understanding each helps you customise the best email experience for your needs.

If you need help configuring email, please get in touch, or use our contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here .

How Outlook Categories Transform Email Management: A Simple Guide for Everyday Users

by Steve Galloway | Mar 6, 2026 | Articles and help

Introduction

Most Outlook users still rely on folders to store and manage their email. It’s familiar, and for small volumes of email it works well enough. But as your mailbox grows, folders start to break down. Messages fit into multiple topics, threads get split across separate folders, and it becomes harder to find what you need quickly. Outlook categories solve this problem.

Outlook Categories turns your Inbox or Sent Items into a dynamic, instantly searchable workspace. Instead of dragging email into rigid folders, you add one or more coloured tags – i.e. Outlook Categories to an email. These tags make it possible to filter and group messages on the fly—exactly the way people already search the web using keywords, not folders.

Enter the name of a category you want to filter in “search” and turn your Inbox into a dynamically generated folder which lists activty associated with your tag, e.g all items tagged with “Brian” in this screenshot.

Click open the headers below to learn more about Outlook Categories. You may also be interested in these associated articles.

Support options are available for professional assistance.For help planning a taxonomy that can be managed over time, please contact us.

Why Folders Don’t Scale

Folders are great for tidy filing cabinets, but email doesn’t behave like paperwork. Common problems include:

Emails often belong to more than one folder. A message from a supplier might relate to two different projects. Which folder should it go in?
Moving an email breaks the thread. If part of the conversation is in another folder, you lose context.
Folder structures change over time. Projects evolve, businesses reorganise, priorities shift. Your folder tree becomes a maze.

As your mailbox grows, rigid storage (folders) become harder to maintain, not easier. This is why search engines like Google and Bing are so successful. We search by keyword (or category) and it works. So, we already use keywords every day to sort information. As your email volumes grow, keywords or categories become the logical way to rapidly find emails and threads.

Why Outlook Categories Work Better

Outlook Categories act like keywords or tags. An Outlook Category is a flexible, stackable, colour-coded label that help you recognise and organise email instantly. You can:

apply multiple categories to a single email
search or filter by category in seconds
change categories without moving the message
build dynamic, instant “views” of your Inbox

In other words, your Inbox becomes a smart workspace—no filing cabinet required.

Use categories to filter large Inboxes for emails tagged with a category to create a dynamic folder from your Inbox or Sent Items

Real Example: Tracking Deliveries Using Outlook Categories

Consider this scenario: at any one time we might have several outstanding orders from retailers or suppliers. If everything is delivered “next day”, that’s fine. Sometimes, though, a delivery may take weeks to despatch. We can put our Inbox to work to track deliveries using Outlook Categories to know what you have ordered and what has arrived.

Outlook Categories: example workflow setup

You need two categories (see this article to learn how to create a category):

Outstanding (colour-coded, for items not yet received)
Delivered (or “Complete”, for orders that have arrived)

Outlook Categories: track deliveries

This how the workflow looks once your categories are established:

When you receive an order confirmation, apply the Outstanding category.
When the goods arrive, change it to Delivered
Use Outlook’s filter (i.e. Search) options to show only Outstanding emails when you want to check what you’re still waiting for.
Switch filters to Delivered if you need to confirm what has arrived

Rather than using a tag called Delivered, you could call the tag Completed – this way you could use one tag to deal with other projects or tasks that are completed. This becomes an issue of planning and category management. When creating categories it is helpful to have a plan of how tags should be organised to make it easier to manage your “taxonomy” over time.

At their simplest level, Outlook Categories can manage individual recipients, groups, subjects/projects, and more.

To find out how to create an Outlook Category, see this article.

How to Filter Emails by Category

To bring fingertip power to Categories powerful, first add them to Outlook’s filter options in the Search utility.

Go to your Inbox or Sent Items
Click the Filter icon at the right of the Outlook Search field*
Choose Add, More Filters or Search Tools → Advanced Find (depending on version).
Add Categories as a filter field

Optionally, you can add Categories as their own field to make frequently used or topically important Categoires available in your Search drop-down.

*Hot Tip: the fliter icon does not appear by default inthe Outlook Search field. Instead, hover your mouse over the right side of your Search field to reveal the filter options icon.

Why Outlook Categories Beat Folders for Productivity

With Outlook Categories, you gain several long‑term advantages:

Speed: Find what you need in seconds
Flexibility: One email can have multiple categories
Reduced clutter: Your folder list stays simple
Consistency: Categories remain relevant even as your work changes
Better search: Filters turn your Inbox into a powerful, dynamic dashboard

Most importantly, categories match how people already think. We tag photos, tag social media posts, tag documents—and we search the internet using tags or keywords. Categories simply bring that same modern approach to email.

Try Outlook Categories

If you struggle to keep on top of overflowing folders, or if you feel like you can never find the right message when you need it, give Outlook categories a try.

Start small with your Outstanding and Delivered tags, and once you see how much time you save, you can expand categories into other areas—projects, clients, personal admin, travel, invoices, support requests, and more.

Your email doesn’t need more folders. It needs better visibility. For large volumes, several emails can be selected (for instance in a folder) and categorised. However, with long established folder structures it mighjt not be practical to try to convert all emails to categories. Often, categories and folders co-exist. Folders become important in situations where a multiple users need access to a folder.

Lastly, note that categories are not easily assigned at an organizational level. So, if you work within an organizational group, it makes sense to establish a policy that colleagues can conform to.

About ComStat.uk: Internet Service Provider Comstat provides IT support, web hosting, and media services including website design, Microsoft 365 setup, and audio/video production, serving businesses across Denbighshire, North Wales and Wirral from Ruthin, and Lancashire and the Northwest from Bolton.

OneNote Sync Troubleshooting: Fixing Missing Sections and Notebook Conflicts on Android

by Steve Galloway | Mar 2, 2026 | Articles and help

Case Study: OneNote Sync Troubleshooting

When OneNote works well, it offers a seamless experience across devices: imagine having your post-it notes: searchable, everywhere you go. Sometimes sync issues appear without warning, though. This case study explains a real example of OneNote sync troubleshooting where a user found that some notebook sections were missing on Android, Quick Notes were not syncing correctly, and another notebook caused unexpected behaviour.

This guide shows what happened, why it happened, and how a simple OneNote sync troubleshooting fix restored proper synchronisation across desktop, web, and mobile devices. This article uses an Android deployment as an example, and a workflow is included in *** explaining how to resolve OneNote sync in Apple iOS in section <How to reset OneNote for mobile sync> below.

Click open the headers below to learn more about keeping OneNote firing on all cylinders.

You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

OneNote sync symptoms

The issue arose when a user noticed that the 2026 section of their notebook was visible on OneNote for Windows desktop and OneNote for the web, but the 2026 section did not appear on OneNote Mobile for Android. The older sections (2022–2025) appeared normally, and Quick Notes worked on desktop, but new Quick Notes did not show up in the correct place on mobile.

The user colour-coded his sections so that the current year is always coloured green. However, on his Android phone, last year’s section – 2025 – was coloured green. On his desktop and web notebook instances, 2025 was coloured grey and 2026 was green. This turned out to be instructructive as we will see later.

So, only part of the notebook structure was syncing, and section colours on Android mobile did not match the desktop or web versions. Partial mismatches are a classic signal that OneNote Mobile has cached an outdated version of the notebook.

At the same time, the user noticed a second notebook on his mobile. Let’s call this “Charlie’s Notebook.” This notebook was not open in Charlie’s desktop version, yet OneNote app on Charlie’s Android treated it as the default notebook on his mobile phone. This meant a feature called Quick Notes that were created on the phone were silently routed into Charlie’s Notebook whch the user never used, instead of the main M365 notebook where our user keeps all his client meeting notes in a date ordered journal. This meant that notes created in his desktop “Quick Notes” did not sync to the expected location on his mobile phone – instead, the “quick notes” were routing to Charlie’s notebook too.

This combination of missing sections, mismatched colours, and a phantom notebook is a common pattern addressed through OneNote sync troubleshooting. It is easily fixed – when you know how.

Click open the next section to find out more about fixing this OneNote sync problem.

Root Cause: A Cached Notebook Structure on Android

OneNote Mobile caches each notebook’s structure when it is first opened. It continues to use that cached structure until the app is forced to refresh it. Even when new sections are added on desktop or web, Android may not notice new sections unless the OneNote cache on the Android handset is fully cleared.

In this case, the “Charlie’s Notebook” entry was an old OneDrive notebook created years earlier when the user first setup OneNote. Android had continued treating it as the default notebook. The result was:

Quick Notes were sent to the wrong notebook
New sections like 2026 never appeared
Notebook colours stayed out of date
Recent Notes showed pages from two different notebooks

All of this pointed toward a stale cached notebook that needed a proper reset.

The Fix: Resetting OneNote’s Data on Android

The correct solution for this type of OneNote sync troubleshooting is not reinstalling the app, but clearing its cached notebook data through Android’s app settings. This approach forces OneNote Mobile to:

Forget all cached notebook versions
Re-download the correct structure from SharePoint
Rebuild section lists and colours
Refresh the default notebook
Drop any old notebooks that should no longer sync

How to reset OneNote for mobile sync

This workflow was performed on Android 12. The steps might vary from device to device, but the process is similar. For Apple iOS devices, see 2. Apple iOS below.

1. Android

Open Android Settings
Go to Apps
Choose OneNote
Open Storage & Cache
Tap Clear Storage
relaunch OneNote and sign in again if asked
Reopen only your principle notebook
do not open other notebooks

2. Apple iOS

iOS does not offer a “Clear data/cache” button like Android. So, to achieve the same result:

Remove the app (or offload it), which deletes local data.
Reinstall the app, which causes OneNote to rebuild its notebook list and download fresh copies from the cloud.

Once your mobile app downloads a fresh notebook structure, sections and notes will sync properly. Check for icon and colour-coding behaviours and compare to your OneNote desktop installation. Now, all Quick Notes (automatically installed when a notebook is created) will sync across desktop, web, and mobile exactly as expected. Test this by creating a test note in Quick Notes

Summary

The important point here is that when a notebook has changed significantly on OneNote desktop or Web, Android and Apple may need a full cache reset to see the updated structure.

This problem is not uncommon. Unfortunately, users often shrug their shoulders when this kind of sync fails and OneNote loses its utility as. Not unreasonably, users are not sure where to look for the problem or even what the problem is. Happily, functionality is easily fixed and this article should help you understand that OneNote caches on mobile devices can be easily remedied.

If you would like help exploring OneNote features implementing OneNote across devices, feel free to get in touch, or use out contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

Laptop Battery Health: Practical Power Management Tips to Prolong Your Battery Lifespan

by Steve Galloway | Feb 21, 2026 | Articles and help

Laptop Battery Health: Tips to Prolong Your Battery's Lifespan

Laptop battery health is taken for granted. However, its original manufacture quality and ongoing useage are significant factors in extending your laptop’s longevity.

Modern laptops use lithium‑ion batteries. They are reliable and even though technology improves, they do wear down over time. The good news is that you can slow that ageing significantly. With the right settings, habits, and software tools, you can keep your laptop battery health strong for years. This guide explains practical steps any user can apply, whether you own a Dell, Lenovo, HP, ASUS, or another brand. If you need help fine‑tuning your setup, please get in touch.

Click open the headers below to learn more about how Windows Pro and Windows Pro are intended to be used. Support options are available for professional assistance. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

Why Power Management Matters for Laptop Battery Health

Lithium‑ion batteries age fastest when held at a very high charge or exposed to unnecessary heat. Manufacturers like Dell openly recommend limiting maximum charge to around 80% to reduce wear, noting that custom settings such as <Start Charging> at about 60% charge and <Stop Charging> at about 80–90% help preserve long‑term capacity. Especially with low cost hardware where componentry is necessarily inexpensive, it makes sense to ease stress on this kind of battery.

General battery‑care discussions from wider user communities also support keeping charge levels between 40% and 80% for optimal laptop battery health.

Keeping your laptop plugged in at 100% all day may feel convenient, but it increases chemical stress inside the battery. Likewise, letting it regularly drain to near zero also accelerates degradation. Managing these extremes will improve laptop battery health.

Use Charge Limits to Improve Laptop Battery Health

Major manufacturers feature built‑in tools that let you control when charging starts and stops. This is not necessarily a laptop issue. For instance, current iterations of Android and iOS provide battery power management tools.

Cautionary warning

Even among large manufacturers which use better quality components, low price points mean laptop batteries can often be prone to premature failure. This is not a universal eventuality. However, premium hardware is more durable and less prone to failure. So, especially where lower cost hardware is concerned, using a strategy that reduces strain on a lithium-ion battery is desirable.

Leading manufacturers have different approaches. Some provide software, and usually BIOS will include power management features, which is probably the better way to handle power management.

ASUS

ASUS Armoury Crate or MyASUS offers “Battery Health Charging” modes such as Maximum Lifespan Mode, keeping charge around 60% or 80%.

Dell

Dell Power Manager or BIOS settings allow users to set custom ranges such as Start at 60% / Stop at 80%, aligning with Dell’s guidance to reduce “high‑state‑of‑charge dwell.”

HP

Some HP Business models include BIOS‑level “Maximize Battery Life” settings that prevent charging to 100%.

Lenovo ThinkPad / IdeaPad

Lenovo Vantage typically includes a “Battery Conservation Mode,” often limiting charging to around 55–60%.

Laptop Battery failure symptoms

Battery failure is usually a gradually developing situation and it is not always obvious that a battery is compromised. There are three main symptoms to look out for:

your battery life starts degrading, requiring increasing mains power input to maintain charge
the maximum battery charge capacity diminishes as cells fail
the battery swells, often causing warping of the laptop chassis

The last symptom is the most serious. By this point, the battery is already compromised and poses catastrophic risk to the laptop as motherboard and circuits are stressed. Beyond damage to the device, this kind of battery damage poses a fire risk.

These symptoms are equally relevant to mobile phones and tablets.

Everyday Habits That Support Laptop Battery Health

Improving laptop battery health goes beyond charge limits. Higher-end laptops, and even more recent Android iterations provide AI monitoring to gauge charging strategies. Common sense is a cheap fix, too. These small habits make a long-term difference:

Avoid constant 100% charging. High charge levels accelerate wear.
Avoid deep discharges. Letting the battery reach 0% shortens lifespan.
Keep your laptop cool. Heat is one of the biggest contributors to cell damage. Using your device in a well‑ventilated area helps maintain battery longevity.
Store your laptop at around 50% charge if not used for several days. This aligns with Dell’s own storage guidance.
Avoid cheap chargers. Under‑powered power bricks can cause inconsistent charging and more heat, reducing battery health.

These straightforward changes can noticeably slow wear and prolong functional lifespan.

Summary

Not all systems expose the same settings, and some users may need organisation‑wide configuration, BIOS adjustments, or compatibility checks. If you want the best configuration for your device—or your fleet—comstat.uk can help you:

Select ideal charge‑limit ranges.
Configure BIOS‑based battery settings.
Recommend manufacturer‑approved power tools.
Diagnose battery‑health concerns.
Apply policies across multiple business devices.

Proper configuration ensures your laptop battery health remains as strong as possible over the full lifecycle of your device.

If you would like help checking your a laptop battery health settings, feel free to get in touch, or use out contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here

Why Small Businesses Struggle With Microsoft 365 on Windows Home PCs

by Steve Galloway | Feb 18, 2026 | Articles and help

Why Small Businesses Struggle With Microsoft 365 on Windows Home PCs

Small businesses run into problems with Microsoft 365 long before they open Outlook, save a file to OneDrive or start collaborating. The trouble begins the moment a new computer is purchased. Usually, small business owners choose a PC or a laptop with Windows 11 Home pre-installed. They sign in with a personal Microsoft account, and only later discover that this creates a confusing mix of identities, storage locations, and settings. By the time Microsoft 365 gets added, the system is already working against them.

This article introduces a four‑part series that explains why things go wrong, what larger organisations do differently, and how small businesses can take simple steps to avoid the frustration altogether.

Click open the headers below to learn more about this series of articles which discusses how Microsoft intends Microsoft 365 to operate. You can jump to articles in this series in this list:

You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

Where the Confusion Starts: Windows Home and Personal Microsoft Accounts

Windows 11 Home requires users to sign in with a personal Microsoft account. This makes sense for home users, but not for business environments that rely on Microsoft 365. The moment a personal account is used at setup, the computer becomes a consumer device rather than a business device. When Microsoft 365 is added later, the user ends up with two identities that often look identical—especially when the same email address is used.

This is where Microsoft 365 device setup begins to unravel:

Files get saved to personal OneDrive (5GB) rather than OneDrive for Business (1TB).
Users see prompts to “buy more storage,” even though their business plan already includes plenty.
Some apps authenticate with Microsoft 365; others authenticate with a personal Microsoft account.
When something goes wrong, it’s unclear whether the fault lies with Windows, OneDrive, or Microsoft 365 itself.

These problems are not technical failures—they’re identity collisions created at setup. And they lead to extra support time, higher costs, and unnecessary frustration.

How This Impacts Support Costs for Small Businesses

So many support requests for supposed 365 problems have nothing to do with Microsoft 365 at all. Instead, they come from the Windows environment on a machine configured like a home PC. When your computer’s operating system is built around a personal Microsoft account, Microsoft 365 sits on top of that environment as an extra layer rather than a core identity. This makes diagnostics slower, settings harder to manage, and support ends up costing more.

By contrast, when a PC or a laptop uses Microsoft 365 device setup with Entra ID (rather than a Microsoft “personal” account) from the start (Out of the Box or OOTB), your business identity becomes the foundation for the computer. This clean separation protects Microsoft 365 from local Windows issues and creates a more reliable and predictable environment. That means fewer problems, faster fixes, and lower support costs.

For instance, signing your computer directly into 365 at startup, there is no question about where your apps and files reside – they are governed completely by your 365 tenancy. There is no need for a Microsoft (personal) account at all, unless you want to operate a consumer Microsoft account.

In a scenario where a laptop of PC is to be connected directly to a 365 user account at the beginning of the day, a new Windows PC needs to be configured OOTB using a workflow that breaks the conventional configuration process that compels you to adopt a Microsoft “personal” account. Later articles in this series describe this process. If Windows has already been configured with a Microsoft (personal) account, a direct 365 login can still be accomplished. However, it measn that work will be necessary to remove 365 connections from the existing Microsoft (personal) account.

Why Future Articles Matter

This introduction opens the door to a deeper look at how small businesses can avoid these problems entirely. The next articles in this series will explain:

How larger organisations configure devices using Microsoft Entra ID and Intune, and what small businesses can learn from them.
How to set up a new computer correctly, using a Microsoft 365 business account at first startup to avoid identity conflicts.
How to fix an existing computer that has already been set up with a personal Microsoft account.

By understanding how Microsoft 365 device setup works—and how it differs between Windows Home and Windows Pro—you can avoid the mistakes that cause most of the frustration in the first place.

Often, this seems like an irrelevance because – well, what works, works. The problem is that Microsoft “Home” environments do not enjoy the hardened security that businesses opt for. Unfortunately, the implication only becomes evident when a production computer is compromised and with it a 365 tenancy. For this reasaon, larger businesses avoid Windows Home/Microsoft Account paradigms in favour of Windows Pro/365 Entra ID. The good news is for those who need industrial strength reliability and security, small business owners and professionals can now leverage hardened performance which is proven in commercial contexts.

Summary

Small businesses do not struggle with Microsoft 365 because the platform is complex. They struggle because Windows Home pushes them into a consumer setup that clashes with Microsoft 365’s business tools. By choosing the right edition of Windows and using a Microsoft 365 business identity from day one, you can keep personal and business environments cleanly separate, reduce support costs, and get far more value from your investment.

This series will help you make that shift with confidence.

Why Windows Pro Is Better for Small Office: A Practical Guide for Business Owners

by Steve Galloway | Feb 10, 2026 | Articles and help

Windows 11 - Home edition or Pro?

Many small‑business owners end up using Windows Home without realising it isn’t designed for business needs. This happens for a few reasons. For instance, most small business owners buy their laptops from retailers, and almost all of these machines ship with Windows Home by default. The device looks the same, feels the same, and runs the same apps. Some buyers are not advised adequately to know there is even such a thing as Windows Pro, so it is easy to assume it’s “good enough” for work.

There is also the common idea that a business computer should double as a home computer. It is tempting to use the same device for work, family photos, streaming, and social media. But this creates a hidden risk. A computer that mixes personal and business use is far more likely to be exposed to online threats, accidental installs, and privacy issues.

Microsoft designed Windows Pro for small business users exactly because business devices face higher risks. While Windows Home is built for entertainment and general use, Windows Pro includes additional protections that help keep customer information safe, reduce downtime, and support proper operational security. It also helps you stay aligned with GDPR responsibilities through better data control and stronger security features. Windows Enterprise is fuctionally elevated further and rounds out Microsoft’s strategy for its business-class operating systems.

Even if you never touch advanced settings, these built‑in protections reduce risk and exposure to costly intervention over the long term.

Click open the headers below to learn more about how Windows Pro and Windows Pro are intended to be used. Support options are available for professional assistance. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here.

Why Microsoft Makes Two Versions of Windows

Microsoft’s logic is simple:

Windows Home is built for comfort, entertainment, and incidental daily use
Windows Pro is built for reliability, security, and work

Business owners deal with invoices, customer details, financial records, tax files, and confidential communications. Losing any of these—through theft, hardware failure, or malware—can be costly. Windows Pro includes tools that protect against these risks automatically, without needing technical knowledge.

Windows Home tries to imitate some business features, but it cannot match the security or resilience built into Windows Pro. For example, Windows Home only includes basic device encryption, while Windows Pro includes deeper, business‑grade protections such as full BitLocker support and professional device‑management options.

Windows Pro: Real‑World Benefits

1. Better protection for your customer data

Windows Pro provides stronger safeguards for your data and is more aligned with GDPR expectations. Full‑disk encryption and professional security controls mean that if a laptop is lost or stolen, your customer and employer information stays protected. Windows Home only offers a basic form of encryption and does not meet business standard compliance.

2. Lower risk when something goes wrong

Windows Pro includes secure isolation tools, such as Windows Sandbox and Hyper‑V. These let you open unknown files or test apps in a safe, temporary workspace. Nothing in that workspace can harm your real computer. Windows Home does not offer this protection.

This feature alone can prevent costly downtime caused by malware, bad installers, or suspicious attachments.

3. Easier for IT support to protect you

Windows Pro allows your IT support to set up safe defaults, manage updates, and protect your device remotely. This is not possible on Windows Home, which lacks proper management tools, domain join, and several security controls.

In practice, this means:

Fewer interruptions
Fewer “strange things” happening to your computer
Faster recovery if something breaks

4. Remote access that actually works

Windows Pro supports Remote Desktop, so you (or your IT support) can access your office computer safely from anywhere. Windows Home cannot act as a Remote Desktop host, limiting remote work and remote support capabilities.Windows Home features “Quick Assist”, and although this does provide some utility, it is a “lite” application designed for home -> home users.

A Business Computer Should Be a Business Computer

A business device is a business asset. Mixing personal use with work increases risk and reduces reliability. When gaming, photos, family streaming, social media, and work all share the same device, problems multiply. This is not debateable. Whether government, or corporate, work computers manage productivity. Combining TikTok, gaming, shopping, etc. within one container poses risks that make equioment more difficult to manage. For this reason alone, small business users endure far more malicious infitration than government or corporate counterprats, even if corporates make headlines with stellar fines.

Keeping work and personal life on separate devices isn’t just safer—it means smoother operation, better reliability, and less prolonged recovery/cost.

Can I update Windows Home to Pro?

Yes. There are two ways to do this, and although the upgrade is simple, we recommend you should ask for us advice about how to plan and prepare for the upgrade.

1. If you have a product key:

In Windows:

Open Settings
Go to System → Activation
Click Change product key
Enter your Windows Pro key
Follow the prompts and reboot when asked

Windows will unlock Pro features instantly.

2. Buy Windows Pro through Microsoft Store

If you do not have a product key:

Open Settings
Go to System → Activation
Under Upgrade your edition of Windows, select Open Store
Purchase Windows 10/11 Pro and it will upgrade automatically

Note – Microsoft 365 Business users are upgraded to Microsoft Windows Enterprise edition on activation of a Windows Pro license.

Summary

Upgrading to Windows Pro does not mean learning new technology. It is Microsoft’s approach to reducing risk, improving resilience, and protecting customer data automatically. For most small‑business owners, Windows Pro silently delivers the security, reliability, and peace of mind you thought you were getting with Windows Home.

If you would like help implementing a Windows Pro update, feel free to get in touch, or use out contact page to organize an appointment which suits your timetable. You can return to our Index of Articles by clicking here