Microsoft Lumia 540 Tips and Tricks

To import your contacts from your SIM card, then insert the SIM and turn the phone on.

Then go to People. Hold near the top of the screen and select Import SIM contacts.

Microsoft may still be in denial, but Bing is not the best search engine in the world and most Windows Phone users would prefer to use Google by default.

As you might expect from a Microsoft phone, you can’t disable Bing by default, but you can go to the App Store and download the Google Search App.

Once you have that, then simply Pin this to your Start screen so it’s easily accessible.

A useful feature called Word Flow is now built in to Windows Phone devices.

This is similar to the Swype App which allows you to drag your finger from letter to letter to form a word, rather than typing each one. It does take some getting used to, but many users consider this a quicker way to type.

Go to your Pictures tile. Select the Picture you want as the background. Press and Hold on the picture. Then select Change background. You can then adjust the picture by zooming or panning. You can also allow the phone to randomly choose a picture by pressing, holding and selecting ‘Change it for me’

To turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, then follow these instructions:

First, go to your Start screen and swipe left and go to Settings.

Then select Internet sharing and turn Sharing on.

From here you can name your connection by selecting Setup – Broadcast name and entering a name.

You can also secure your Wi-Fi hotspot but adding a password for the connection.

Next, go to another device and find your phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot service.

Note: This will use your data plan, so use wisely!

A neat future of Windows Phone is the Glance settings for your Lock Screen which allows you to setup a number of useful Glance or Peek features when your phone is in Standby. Normally on your lock screen you can Glance at the time, but there are many more options.

To find these options, go to Settings – Glance Screen.

From here you can setup quite a few options, including a timeout if you’re concerned about using your battery when using this feature. You can also set it up so that when you Glance at night, it will show a dark colour rather than a white glare which is hard on the eyes.

If you would like your phone to read out text to you, then you can use an accessibility option by going to Settings – Ease Of Access. Once this is enabled your phone will narrate text that is displayed on the screen.

This feature is currently only available in some countries, however if you go to Settings – Region and select the United States, then this will work for you. It will however read things out with US style currency and dates.

To play your whole music collection, go into the Music and Videos area and press the Play button there.

This will start playing all your music.

It is possible to take a screenshot using Windows Phone however the process has changed from Windows Phone 8 to Windows Phone 8.1. Below we have described both methods for clarity:

Windows Phone 8 – Simply press and hold the Windows key and the Power key together. You might need to hold it for a second or so until the phone registers the combination. You should hear a click sound.

To view the screenshot, then go to Photos – Albums – Screenshots. They should be saved as PNG files.

Windows Phone 8.1 – If you try the above method on this version of WP, then you will see a warning that the combo has changed. The new combination is as follows: Press and hold the Power and Volume Up keys together. As above, you may need to hold for a second or so.

Not every one wants to have their Apps automatically updated. Some prefer to be able to choose, especially when the Apps can take quite some time and data to download.

To disable this automatic settings (which is the default from Windows Phone 8.1), then go to your App Store – Settings and untick Update apps automatically.