How can I sign a PDF document on my computer itself without printing it out?

Neha Sahai

You can do this with the free Adobe Reader. Open the PDF and look for the Sign icon that resembles the nib of a pen. You will find this on the top in the toolbar. You can also select Tools—Fill & Sign from the menu to open the signature panel. You can then choose a photograph of your signature and insert it. You could also scribble your signature with the mouse if you are comfortable with it.

To save your signature, check the box that says “Save signature” and click on Apply to sign the document. You could do the same on a Word document by going to Insert—Picture from the menu.

Search key

Is there a way to search within files for keywords without opening the document?

Pritam Sharma

Agent Ransack is a fast search utility that crawls through files and folders to find the keywords that you specify. Get it from https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack. It is free.

Photo sync

All WhatsApp photos and videos on my mobile are being stored on Facebook. How do I prevent this?

Ratna Datta

This is happening because you did not update the Facebook app on your phone. Photo syncing to Facebook was stopped long ago. Open the app and go to Account—App Settings—Sync Photos and turn off photo sync. Then update the app from Google Play and you should be fine.

Also, go to your phone’s settings and open Apps or App Manager, depending on the version of Android you are using. Look for the Facebook app and open it. Scroll down and tap on Permissions. Now, turn off storage.

Next, open WhatsApp and tap on the three vertical dots on the top right. Go to Settings—Chats and turn off Media visibility. Now WhatsApp images will not show up automatically on your phone’s photo gallery. If you want to save a particular WhatsApp image or video clip, press on it and use the share option to download it into your photo gallery. I would suggest you use Google’s Photos app as your default gallery.

Incomplete messages

Long WhatsApp messages received on my iPhone SE are always trimmed. I never receive the complete message.

Animesh Chakravorty

This can happen when the storage is almost full on your iPhone. You have to make some space by deleting videos, photos and apps you seldom use. Go to Settings—General—iPhone Storage. Enable Offload Unused Apps. Then go through each app and see what you can delete.

Skype error

I am getting a JavaScript error when I open Skype on my Windows 7 desktop. This happens despite having downloaded the latest version of Skype.

Sourav Roy Choudhury

You should not be using Windows 7 in the first place. Microsoft stopped all support for it in mid-January. Pending an upgrade to Windows 10, there are certain things you can try to fix Skype.

Go to Start on the desktop and in the search field type %AppData%. This will open Windows Explorer. Rename the folder Skype to Skype Old. Since Skype uses Internet Explorer for its web interface, we need to test JavaScript in the browser. Launch IE and go to https://javatester.org/javascript.html. The site will tell you whether JavaScript is working properly or not in the browser. You may find that JavaScript has been disabled. To enable it, click on the gear icon on the top right of the browser and go to Internet Options. Tap the Security tab and reset all zones to the default level.

In the same tab, click on Custom level. Under Scripting, enable Active Scripting. Click on Apply or OK so that the changes are saved. Finally, download Skype once again and install it.