q+a I had an iPhone. I lost it and had to buy a smart phone that runs on Android. My contacts were backed up on iCloud. How can I import them onto my new phone?

Bharat Bagla

The easiest was would be to sign in to iCloud on your computer since your contacts are backed up in the cloud. Select all your contacts. Now navigate to the bottom left of the screen and click on the Actions Menu. From here choose Export to vCard. The multiple contacts that you selected will be saved as a single file on your computer.

Now simply log in to your Gmail account and select Contacts from the small upturned triangle next to the Gmail label. Click on ‘More’ and import the .vcf file that you had saved on your computer. Once you have imported the iPhone contacts to Google, you can get rid of duplicate contacts before restoring your contacts on your phone. It is easier to do this on your computer than on your smartphone. Finally, on your Android phone go to Settings — Accounts — Google and sync your contacts. You will find all your iPhone contacts transferred to the new phone.

If you are willing to pay around Rs 210 then you can buy SmoothSync for Cloud Contacts from Google Play and use this app on your Android phone to transfer all your iCloud contacts very easily.

Video download

q+a How do I download a video from any website onto my computer? There are videos on some sites that I am not able to save on to the computer.

Pranab Sen Chowdhury

There are lots of websites such as keepvid.com and clipconverter.cc that help you save videos onto your computer. When the videos are played in an embedded JWPlayer on the website it gets a little tricky to download them. I have tried an excellent extension to the Firefox browser that allows you to download almost any video. Open your Firefox browser and go to Tools —Add-ons. Search for Flash Video Downloader. From your results make sure that you select the one made by FVD Media Inc. If you cannot see the creator’s name, click on ‘More’ next to the description. Now install the add-on. After the installation is complete restart the browser. Go to the site from where you wanted to download the video. Click on the light blue download icon next to the address bar of the browser. Select the url of the video and download it to a folder in your computer. Now you can watch this at your leisure and even when you are offline.

Password protect

q+a How do I password protect a pdf file and burn it to a CD or DVD so that it cannot be copied?

Vikram Kumar

You cannot password protect a pdf file using Adobe Reader. You need to get Adobe Acrobat Pro at least. There are free tools such as PrimoPDF that allow you to create pdf documents and put a password. Check out the free tools at www.primopdf.com. As for copy protecting your DVD or CD many software and movie companies have tried it but everything gets cracked pretty quickly. I recommend you use either WinZip or WinRAR to compress the file. The latter is a capable compression utility. On creating a new archive go to the Advanced tab to set a password. Then burn your archive to a DVD.

Lost space

q+a I am running Windows 8.1 Pro on a 32-bit machine, and, after restoring my system a few days back, I lost 2 GB of system drive space. I tried cleaning and defragging the disk to no avail.

Shiladitya Sengupta

Try downloading a free utility called SpaceSniffer to find out where your space has gone. You can get it from www.uderzo.it/ main_products/space_sniffer.

Go bold

q+a I recently updated my iPhone to iOS 7, but now I am facing a huge problem reading the text. Everything seems lighter.

Nitin Kala

There is a neat solution to your problem within the phone itself. First make sure your iPhone is running on iOS 7.1. You can check this by going to Settings — Software Update. If you are on the latest software go to Settings — General — Accessibility. Turn on Bold Text by sliding the button to your right. If you want your display to show you a larger type turn on Larger Text in Accessibility too.

Send in your computer- related problems to askdoss@abpmail.com with bits&bytes in the subject line