Mike Thomas

IT Trainer and Business Solutions Developer

Helping to Make Your Tech Work for You

Welcome to my Blog

My name is Mike Thomas. I live in Manchester, UK and I work in and have a passion for tech. I have 30+ years experience of working in IT Training, designing and delivering training to businesses and individuals. My areas of focus include Microsoft Office and Power BI. I also have a wealth of experience with Apple Mac and iOS.

In addition to training, I design and develop MS Office based automated solution (using VBA – the automation/programming language built into all the Office apps)

I built this website in order to share my knowledge with you

Beneath The Surface – Part 1

iMacs, MacBooks, iPads and iPhones…when it comes to my tech kit, I’ve had both feet firmly in the Apple camp since 2006. So why, in November 2018, did I choose to spend just over £2,000 on a top-of-the-range Microsoft Surface?

Goal Live: Goal Alerts on iPhone, iPad & Apple Watch

In April 2009 I discovered iFooty. During the 7 years of it’s life (it relied on a 3rd party service and was discontinued in April 2016) it provided me with the latest soccer news and up to the minute scores. But what did I replace it with once it had gone?

Screenflow and HEVC Video – a Match Not Made In Heaven

In Screenflow, she dragged the playhead across the video to check it only to find that there was no audio, there was no waveform in the track on the timeline and there was no picture! Disaster! How did we fix it?

How to Restore Chrome Bookmarks on a Mac

A few weeks ago I accidentally deleted all my bookmarks in Chrome. Because I sync my bookmarks across devices, they also disappeared from my iPhone, iPad, personal Windows laptop and work Windows laptop. In this post I explain how I restored them on my iMac.

iPhone: Receiving Texts in Do Not Disturb Mode

A while ago I made a decision to enable Do Not Disturb mode on my iPhone as a default. The problem with this scenario of course is that there are people that I want to talk to when Do Not Disturb is enabled. In this post I explain how I solved the problem.

Microsoft OneDrive

OneDrive is a Cloud storage solution from Microsoft. In this post I cover how to get access to it on Windows, Mac and iOS and talk about some of the functionality such as syncing, sharing and co-authoring documents.

Sequel Pro – An Essential Tool for WordPress Site Owners

An average website or blog owner will probably never need to fiddle with the WordPress database. However, when it comes to troubleshooting, having a basic understanding of it and being able to access it quickly and easily can save you time (and money)

Running Windows on a Mac

I recently received an email: Hi Mike, I have an iMac but my invoice and stock database is in Access so I continue to use my Windows laptop to access this. I also have Excel spreadsheets and I use Numbers so I end up having two documents to update. Can you recommend an app I can buy for me to be able to use the Access database on my iMac and also the Excel spreadsheets.