Q. We have a number of sentimentally important VHS video tapes. How can I convert these to DVDs?

A. If your video recorder is not too old, it may well handle both tapes and disks. This how I do my conversions, but note that there is a slight drop in quality. Consult the device's manual for how to copy from one format to another. If you don't have a video recorder of this type, your cheapest option is to buy something like the Honestech VHS to DVD Deluxe (currently about £50 from http://www.maplin.co.uk/). This is placed between your PC (with a DVD RW drive!) and your tape video player. Click Record on the PC, and play on the video player, and all should be well, but note that there will be some slight drop in quality in the recording produced. Alternatively, there are specialist copying boxes available, which can be challenging to operate and cost upwards of £300 currently. Finally, you could go to third party specialists like http://www.copymytapes.co.uk/, who will charge from £8/tape.

Q. I have a collection of increasingly elderly digital photographs, and video camera tapes, and am concerned that as technology moves on I shall eventually be unable to see them. How can I avoid them becoming obsolete?

A. This obsolescence is unavoidable unfortunately. Businesses deal with it by transferring data from older formats to newer ones regularly, and we need to do the same domestically. Your choices currently are DVD disk (but for how much longer?), online in one of the numerous Cloud services, USB sticks and external hard drives. I use two external hard drives. Notice that I said two external drives. Never leave yourself with only one copy of important files!

Q. How can I create hyperlinks in a word processed document, and then retain them when I turn the document into a PDF?

A. The technique for inserting hyperlinks: e-mail addresses or websites, in your text onto which your reader can click/tap and have an e-mail draft created automatically or be taken straight to the target website, varies between different word processing products.
Some will simply recognise the link as you type, which makes life very simple, but most require a little more work though not very much.
Here is a generic description of the likely steps required for those products that don't recognise the links as you type.
Your product may well have a small icon to insert hyperlinks alongside those above the typing area such as Save, Open, Print, etc.. To check this, hover your mouse pointer over the icons one by one to see their descriptions.
If you have one of these then, to insert a link, when you reach the point in your text where you want to insert a link, click on the Hyperlink Icon. This will bring up a small window. Select either e-mail or Internet, and then simply type in the information requested and click on Apply or OK.
If you don't have a Hyperlink Icon, check each of the text based menu options above the icons at the top of the screen to see which one has the hyperlink insertion option. The mostly likely one is the one headed Insert.
Using this technique, when you reach the point in your text where you want to insert a link, click on Insert, then Hyperlink, or your equivalent. This will bring up a small window. Select either e-mail or Internet, and then simply type in the information requested and click on Apply or OK.
Many of you turn your word processed documents into PDF files for use on the Internet, or for sending to contacts who may not the same word processing product as you.
Care is needed with this process if the documents to be converted contain hyperlinks.
Few of us can afford the Adobe PDF creating software, and many people turn to the often advertised “create PDFs easily and simply” products available on the Internet, often for free. The problem with these products is that the majority of them handle the conversion to PDF by effectively turning the entire word processed document into a single image, thus stripping out the hyperlink information.
If your word processing product is reasonably new, you don't need another product anyway since it will provide the ability to create PDFs itself and retain the hyperlink information.
You will find the feature – in most WP products – under File at the top of the screen. (If it isn't there, try looking under Tools.) Click on File, and look for Export, or better still Export as PDF. If the former, you will have to select PDF from the drop down file type box during the process. There will probably a small screen with choices, but in the vast majority of cases just accept the settings offered.
If you don't have these options in your WP product then it probably doesn't support PDF creation, but there is one more check you could make to be sure. Click on File, then Save As, and then see if PDF is listed in the file type drop down box.

Q. I back up my photograph collection individually, which is time-consuming. Is there any way of doing this in bulk and automatically?

A. There are a lot of free programs available that will do this for you. I use Duplicati, and I have heard good reports of Back Up Maker, though not used it myself. Duplicati provides more options than Back Up Maker. It also lets you back up to Cloud facilities such as Google Drive as well as to local external drives.

Q. I have a lot of colour slides on 127 film, and want to store them on my PC. How can I do this?

A. You'll need a flat scanner that has a light in the lid. The Epson Perfection V370 is an example of this, and costs about £100 at the time of writing this. Slides in mounts will need to be removed for scanning, and remounted afterwards, which might be problematical with card frames. Once scanned, use a decent photo-editing program - such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 (around £65) - to rotate and scale them, and remove any age-related colour problems.

Q. Is it possible to transfer music from my Sony Walkman (NW-A3000) to my iPhone and iPad?

A. Yes, at least for some if not all music file types, though it will require a bit of work. The Walkman will have come with either Connect, or SonicStage, to transfer tracks between the player and a PC. Neither program is still available, but if you still have either of them you could use it to transfer the tracks to your PC. (N.B. If your operating system is recent - Windows 7 or 8 - this old software may not work, and it doesn't work on Macs.) If they do work, then once on your PC transfer the tracks to the two Apple devices using iTunes after importing them. If they don't work, you could try the free JSymphonic from http://www.tinyurl.com/q28kn9s, and then use iTunes. This will handle your MP3 files, which the Apple devices can play, but you'll need to do more to move any WMA (Windows format) or Atrac (Sony format) files, which they cannot. RealPlayer, free from http://www.real.com/, will convert WMA files to MP3 format, and Sony offers free software from https://www.sony.ie/support/en/content/cnt-dwnl/prd-dna/sony-atrac-to-mp3-conversion-tool/sony-atrac-to-mp3-conversion-tool that will convert Atrac format to MP3, though you will need Connect or SonicStage installed to use it. N.B. Any tracks that were purchased in these two formats will probably not be able to be converted to MP3 if they are protected by digital rights software.

Q. I want to transfer some DVDs to my iPad. When I did this using a Mac, using Handbrake made it simple, but now that I have a PC that software doesn't seem to work. Is there an alternative?

A. There is a free version of Handbrake available for Windows. Go to http://www.handbrake.fr/ to download it.

Q. Is it possible to scan a text document and then be able to edit the text, rather than always produce an image of the document?

A. A free utility called Simple OCR can do what you want. After installation it will start automatically and ask you to choose between using Simple OCR to recognise printed text or Softwriting, which converts handwritten text. The latter is a demo that lasts for 14 days. Click on Machine Print to select Simple OCR. Set the language to English UK and click Select. Click on Add Page and select a source. This can be a scanner to import pages directly, a single file or a folder of files. The last two options are useful if you don’t have a scanner and want to use images from a digital camera instead. A preview of the page appears. Click on Continue and the picture will be imported and converted to black and white. The Rotate image button next to the zoom controls can be used to turn the image so that it is the right way up. Next click and drag around any areas that you wish to exclude from the conversion. This might include images or any snippets of facing pages that were scanned as well. Click the Convert to text button to start conversion. The screen will be split in two with the image at the top and the converted text at the bottom. When all the red and blue words have been fixed, click on the ‘Save document as’ button to save the text as either a Word document or plain text.

Q. I back up the My Documents folders and files periodically, but this doesn't include my e-mail for which I use Outlook Express. How can I back up my e-mails?

A. There are a number of free e-mail back-up offerings. One that I'd recommend is MailStore. It runs across most Windows operating systems, and supports most Windows PC-based mailers.

Q. I have an elderly smartphone which runs the Windows 6.1 operating system. I have 3,500 contacts on it, and when I try to transfer these contacts to my new Android-based smartphone via my PC, over half of them are lost. How can I transfer the complete set?

A. That is an enormous number of contacts by anyone's standards, and will require an “industrial strength” approach! First you need to export your contacts to your PC using iMobileTool (currently on offer at c.£11.50). Next, log into the GMail account that you must have already to use the Android handset, but using your PC. Open Contacts by clicking on the arrow next to Mail in the top left of the screen, then select More, then Import. Once the contacts have been imported into GMail, open the GMail app on your Android handset and tap Sync. It will probably take sometime to download so many contacts to your handset! N.B. Don't forget that your contacts will no longer be on your handset's SIM card, but in GMail on the Internet, so any future handsets will also need to be synchronised with the same GMail account.

Q. I have a lot of 35mm negatives from the 1960s-1980s period which are in good condition, whilst the original photographs from them have faded and the colours have degraded. Is it possible to make digital copies from the negatives to store on my computer and print as required?

A. Yes it is, and it need not cost a lot depending on what equipment and software you have already. Many modern scanners, including those that are part of all-in-one printers, are of sufficient quality to be able to scan directly from 35mm negatives. If your scanner is an old one, or a bottom of the range all-in-one, then you may be able to buy a 35mm adaptor for it, but obviously try a direct scan first to see if the result is adequate. If it is not, there are specific negative slide scanners available. One that is spoken highly of is the AgfaPhoto AFS3 Negative Slide Scanner at around £60. You will find similar devices on Amazon, and eBay, from around £50 upwards new. Having scanned the negatives, you may want to retouch the scans of any that are damaged, or adjust their colours. Most scanners, general purpose or specific negative scanners, come with only basic editing software. If you need something more powerful, then you might consider buying Adobe Photoshop Elements for about £60.

Q. I have paper documents that I would like to not only store on my PC, but be able to edit them on it too, but I don't want to have to retype them. Is it possible to scan them in such a way as to make editing possible?

A. Yes, it is, but you may still find it faster to retype them! To scan documents so that they may be edited subsequently, you need optical character recognition (OCR) software. There are many OCR programs available. The two consistently rated the best are ABBYY FineReader 11 Pro, and Nuance's OmniPage 18. FineReader runs on both Macs and Windows PCs; OmniPage only on Windows PCs. Both provide free trials, so that you may see which you prefer, but beware: neither are cheap! However, OCR technology is not flawless - computers are less able to make sensible guesses of what messed up letters or words may be - so faded, torn or badly printed documents, or those in unusual fonts, may be rendered with so many errors that it would be faster and more accurate simply to retype the documents. OCR scanned documents will also lose their formatting, so graphics, layouts and fonts will all have to be done again.

Q. I used my PC to burn some of a friend's documents onto a CD. I am running Windows Vista, and he runs XP. When the CD is in his PC, it shows as empty; on mine, all the data are there. What's happening?

A. A CD burnt under Vista also ought to work with XP. So, if this isn't happening, the chances are that during the burning process the CD wasn't properly "closed" ("finalised", or "made compatible" in earlier Windows versions). Closing a CD is the final stage of Live File System, one of the two ways that Vista can burn a disc. With Live File System, data are written to the CD in stages, which means that you can do it in several sessions rather than one long sitting.
Before ejecting the CD however, the data-burning session should be closed by the software, so make sure you go through all the steps asked for, rather than cutting corners and hitting the disc eject button. It could explain why your PC see the files - it's picking up where it left off - and your friend's cannot.
Avoid the problem by burning discs in Mastered format. Here the computer writes all the data you want to copy as a single hit. Use this for data exchange whenever possible (the downside is that you can't later reinsert the disc and write more data to it). Choose Mastered by clicking the "Show formatting" button as you write the disc - see http://www.tinyurl.com/VistaCD, http://www.tinyurl.com/VistaCD1, http://www.tinyurl.com/VistaCD2 and http://www.tinyurl.com/VistaCD3.

Q. My PC runs Windows XP, but my friends have moved on to more recent software such as Windows 7 and Office 2010. Now I cannot open the Word documents they send me. Is there any way to read them without buying an upgrade?

A. Word is part of Microsoft Office, and in its recent versions of the suite the company has changed the way that the program saves a file, from .doc to .docx - a format incompatible with older software. You have four options. The first is to ask your friends to save any documents for you in Rich Text Format (.rtf), which they can do within the Save As dialogue box. The second is to ask them to save any documents for you in the older .doc format, which they can do within the Save As dialogue box too. The third is to download the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack from http://www.tinyurl.com/3sf7tpj, which will let you read new Office documents using the older software. This will help with other types of Office file too. Finally, if you are using a fuller version of the Office suite, not just Word, you could install a very good free alternative to it called OpenOffice, which can be downloaded from http://www.openoffice.org. Whilst it uses its own file formats, it will also open all Office file formats, and can save in Office formats via the Save As dialogue.