Everyone has at least one friend who knows “everything” about computers. Any problem that you have with any piece of software or hardware, they seem to know the answer.  But I’m about to let out a big secret that my technological colleagues won’t thank me for — they don’t know everything!  What they do know is how to start looking for the right answers.

It’s almost guaranteed that any problem or question you’re having with your computer has happened to someone at least once before. And hopefully they (or the product companies themselves) have documented it somewhere on the internet.

An easy and quick method to begin your search is to use Google. Go tohttp://www.google.com (or www.google.de if you prefer to search in German — can be helpful if you have a German operating system and you get errors in German!) and enter your problem or question into the search field.  Here are some suggestions for getting the best (i.e. most relevant) results.

Search Basics

The search terms/phrase you enter into Google should follow this pattern:

<Vendor company name> <product/model name> <version/model number> <details about what you want to know>

Not all these fields are required, so don’t worry if you don’t know the version or model number.  However, the results you get will most likely be more relevant if you can provide all of this information.

Search Examples

Error Messages: Let’s say you’re trying to export an Adobe Indesign file into a PDF format.  When you do so, Adobe displays an error message “PDF Export Failed”.  Not very helpful — you don’t know why it failed, or what you can do to fix it.  You can formulate your Google search like this:

adobe indesign pdf export failed

In this example we don’t know the Indesign version number, so we’ve left it out. But we still get plenty of results, including a few pages with suggested checklists and troubleshooting tips.

“How do I…?”: Maybe you’re not getting an error message, you just don’t know how to accomplish something using one of your programs, and you can’t find the manual or don’t know exactly what to search for in the Help section.  Use the same basic search pattern to look for the answer:

microsoft powerpoint 2007 add animation

You’ll find online documentation, and in some cases, even videos showing step-by-step how to do what you want to do.

Evaluating the Results

So how do you decide, out of the hundreds (thousands?) of results might be most useful to you?  The links you get back from Google will most likely be one of three types, and each type has advantages and disadvantages.

1. Links to documentation posted by the product vendors themselves: The company who made the product knows the most about what their product does and how it functions; however, they will also not be interested in broadcasting the fact that their product has a flaw, so might not fully discuss inherent problems.  These types of links usually are best for “how-to” type questions, or for troubleshooting tips.
2. Private professionals or online magazines: Some people who have encountered computer problems often post information about how they solved them. Many private computer professionals maintain blogs, and there are many online magazines (“ezines”) that discuss technology issues and regularly post articles on all sorts of topics.  These are generally good sources with independent views on the products.
3. Posts to Online forums: Online discussion forums are a good source of information from private users.  In most threads the users discuss problems and debate the efficacy of their solutions. These are great sources of real end-consumer experience, and often are good sources for creative solutions to esoteric problems.  But keep in mind that the skill and experience of these private individuals varies wildly — some suggestions are genius, some are just plain stupid, or dangerous!

Conclusion

As with all information that comes from the internet, you have to exercise some judgment yourself on whether what you read is reasonable or not.  Some things to keep in mind: Does the information come from an established source? Is the information on a moderated forum versus an open “ask and answer” site?

Remember that these guidelines are meant to give you a quick entry into the huge amount of tech support available on the internet.  You may find your answer quickly, it may take longer (maybe clicking a link from the Google results, to an article that links you to a user forum, etc. etc.). But remember: if you don’t find an answer you understand, or if you’re not comfortable following whatever instructions you find, you can always fall back on that “computer expert” friend, or contact a computer professional.

Note: as I was writing this article, I came across the Tech Support Cheat Sheet — from the good people at webcomic xkcd. 😀