MakeUseOf - Productivity

I can't write PowerShell, so I had Claude do it for me — here's what I automated

Rob LeFebvre — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:00:17 GMT

I'm not well-versed in automating things on Windows. I know the concepts around Task Scheduler, PowerShell, batch files, and the like, but if I try to use these tools, I know I'll end up in some forum rabbit hole that assumes I know what "mapped drive context" means. I just want my Documents folder backed up on a schedule so I don't need to remember to do it myself.

I stopped cleaning messy data by hand the day I discovered this built-in Excel feature

Chris Hachey — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:30:18 GMT

Using Microsoft Excel is something that many people have had to do over the years, as it has been a requirement for many jobs or has been a useful tool for people at home. Excel can provide many functions for users, as it can collect and organize data in spreadsheets. Learning how to use Excel can be tricky, especially if you only use it occasionally.

I used Claude and NotebookLM together for research and realized they're solving completely different problems

Abhijith N Arjunan — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:30:18 GMT

Research assistance is one area where I rely on LLM-based AI platforms more frequently. Compared to other uses of generative AI, using AI chatbots to help you structure your research and identify connections in your notes creates less tension, especially in academia. These days, however, I don't use as wide a variety of AI tools for research.

I had 500 orphan notes in Obsidian — here’s the exact system I used to link them all

Saikat Basu — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:30:18 GMT

When I say 500 orphan notes, I'm being dramatic, but only slightly. The actual number was a bit less, though it felt like more when I opened Obsidian's Graph View for the first time and saw dozens of isolated dots floating like soccer balls in space. Each dot was a note with no links in or out. Just ideas stranded in the dark of my Obsidian theme.

This open-source AI app cleans out my inbox, and doesn't steal my data

Shaun Cichacki — Fri, 01 May 2026 11:00:17 GMT

It doesn't matter if it's for work, business, or pleasure; I have way too many unnecessary emails clogging up my inbox. I've had the same email address for over a decade, and one of my biggest faults is forgetting to unsubscribe from newsletters and companies I may once have been enamored with. In an increasingly busy digital world, the last thing I want to do is sift through roughly 20,000 unread emails that I may or may not need in the future. Plus, I don't feel like getting scammed by someone in my emails, either.

Excel's automation features are faster than ChatGPT, but most people never find them in the menus

Adaeze Uche — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:00:17 GMT

It’s very likely that you’ve tried to clean, sort, or analyze your data using ChatGPT or another artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, assuming that it’s the fastest way to get the job done. However, Excel offers several automation features that can handle a wide range of data tasks with impressive speed. The challenge is that it’s not always obvious which tools to use or where to look for them.

I uninstalled these apps and just use them in the browser — my PC has never been snappier

Shaheer Khan — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:00:17 GMT

Modern OSs are pretty bloated — just the stock version is enough to chip away at your system's performance, which is why I recommend de-bloating ASAP. That said, I was unknowingly making things worse for my already slow system by downloading unnecessary desktop programs, whereas I could’ve used those apps in the browser with no downsides.

Claude says no more often than ChatGPT, and that's actually by design

Mahnoor Faisal — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:30:25 GMT

Just a few months ago, Claude users felt somewhat like a niche community. The tool was primarily talked about by developers only, and that was because of the tool's excellent coding capabilities. And then somehow, the stars aligned for Anthropic and everything turned in their favor.

Excel's dynamic array functions made me realize I'd been solving problems the hard way for years

Yasir Mahmood — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:30:18 GMT

Most Excel users I know learned formulas the same way I did — one function at a time, stacked on top of whatever they already knew. Dynamic array functions don't replace those skills; they just make a lot of the workarounds unnecessary. I've been running my self-updating top-five lists with TAKE and DROP for a while, and the same shift has happened with the four functions below. Each one reduced a multi-step routine I used to perform reflexively to a single formula.

I gave Claude Code five years of notes and finally got the organization I'd been waiting for

Yadullah Abidi — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:30:18 GMT

I've been taking my notes digitally for about as long as I can remember. In that time, I've gone through plenty of note-taking apps. At first, it was OneNote and Windows 11's sticky notes, then Notion, and when that didn't work out, I switched to AFFiNE. At this point, I've got half a decade's worth of notes scattered across different apps, and organizing them has turned out to be a bigger task than I imagined.