You're wrong? Shake the iPhone and other tricks to undo almost everything on the mobile and on the computer

Undo command ('undo' in English) Artur Kamalov

Haste or carelessness can play tricks while using the computer or mobile.

An email that should not have been sent, or a very important document that has been unceremoniously sent to the trash.

There are many situations in which one can find oneself on the edge of the abyss thinking that a simple touch has ruined hours of work.

But in the world of computing and mobile phones, almost everything has a solution and it comes under the magical

undo

command

.

The now famous sequence with the keyboard control + Z (or command + Z on Macs) is an old acquaintance in the world of computers and gives way to a function without which, the world of computers would not be the same.

Its origins date back to 1974, when the developers of the Xerox PARC Bravo text editor thought it would be a good idea to incorporate the ability to undo last moves into the program.

One step back to make amends

The

undo

command

, as its name indicates, reverts one or more executions indicated by the user.

However, the simplicity of its operation hides a complex process that manages to take a step back in execution.

"This command is based on a programming pattern called

memento

", explains Fernando Suárez, president of the General Council of Colleges in Computer Engineering.

This command achieves that “with each change of an object, a copy of it is made before its modification”.

This automated snapshot enables the system to leave a trail to revert to if necessary.

Although this function allows, by default, to reverse the last action, in some applications there may be several setbacks.

"At present, this functionality has evolved thanks to the greater capacity of the equipment," explains Suárez.

"Office, for example, saves the last 100 actions."

Things that can be undone

Cancel sending emails with Gmail

Google's popular mail service included the ability to undo the sending of emails in 2015. Actually, it is not a question of recovering a sent email, but of assigning a predetermined time before sending it, so that the sender can cancel it.

This possibility in Gmail allows you

to hot

amend

possible errors in sending: misspellings, wrong recipients, etc.

But the sender won't have much time to undo the send, as Gmail allows four options to undo the send: 5, 10, 20, and 30 seconds.

These times must be configured by the user in Settings / General / Undo from the configuration in the web menu.

Word and text editors: recovering deleted texts

Sending an email with inappropriate or wrong content can cause problems, but the consequences are worse when what has been ruined is an entire office document.

Hours and hours of work can be wasted if a document is accidentally erased or corrupted.

Fortunately, developers have considered this possibility and have automated document autosave processes.

In the case of Word, unless the user changes the settings, the document is automatically saved from time to time;

With Google Doc, working directly in the cloud makes the process even easier.

However, it can happen that the application closes unexpectedly and the document appears to be lost.

What to do in this case?

Microsoft has established a whole battery of measures with which to deal with a lost file.

The first step suggested by those from Redmond is to try to locate the document in the folder where Word makes its backup copies;

It will be necessary to try to identify it among those that contain the .wbk extension (it is best to do so considering the date and time).

If that doesn't work, the Windows Recycle Bin should be a must-see in the event of a disaster (a file is rarely completely deleted in one fell swoop on a modern operating system).

If the file is located but damaged, Microsoft offers a comprehensive guide to restore it.

In the case of Google, the process is simpler, since the backup is permanent, and the giant is limited to remembering only how to recover a document that we have accidentally deleted.

Shake iPhone to undo typed text

Not all iPhone owners know that there is a much faster way to erase a written text than to delete character by character with the cursor: shake it.

Yes, Apple is proud to make the use of its devices as intuitive as possible and on the iPhone, if you want to delete written text, just shake the device.

Once this is done, a window will appear on the screen confirming that you want to undo what has been written and that it will have to be validated.

In the same way, you can reverse the deletion of a text by following the same process: shake the device.

Delete a message sent by mistake in WhatsApp

The WhatsApp messaging application is usually a very common ground for committing compromising errors.

An overly affectionate message sent to the boss by mistake or simply, sending content to the wrong recipient.

The signature belonging to Facebook allows you to undo these wrong shipments for a period (a little over an hour), in which you can delete the message in both the sender's and the recipient's folders.

To do this, just press and hold said message until the delete option appears, and there select “for all”.

One thing to keep in mind is that the recipient has been able to read part of the message on the locked screen of their device if they have it configured.

In any case, the text "message deleted" will appear, so it may be prudent to send some kind of clarification to avoid possible suspicions.

Clipboard managers, when what you want is to repeat texts

Undo is as important to correct mistakes as it is to save time redoing processes.

At the end of the week, how many times do we repeat our telephone number, address or email in texts and documents that we send?

These are words, addresses or sequences of characters that are repeated over and over again, and being able to have them stored somewhere so that you can refer to them at will can save you considerable time (and errors).

Clipboard managers are memory-resident applications that are activated by a script.

Their main function is to expand the number of items copied to the clipboard, but they allow you to store items that are repeated frequently and then be introduced with a couple of mouse clicks.

The DNI number, the postal address of the home, the account number ... These recurring elements save considerable time at the end of the year.

Applications such as Confort Clipboard for Windows or Paste for macOS also allow the use of templates that can be used to send repetitive emails or replies to emails that are used frequently.

Keeping track of the

undo

function

and using applications that exploit the most repetitive functions can significantly improve the user's personal productivity.

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