How to store iPhone photos safely

Q: My friend's iPhone 5 and my iPhone SE keep telling us that we don't have enough memory capacity to store more photos. So, we reluctantly delete a large number of photos, but still get the warning. What can we do?

Jo-Ida Hansen, St. Paul

A: There's no need to lose photos that you like. If your iPhone is low on storage space, you can store some of your photos on a computer or on a free online storage website.

You can find out how much space is available on your phone by going to the Settings app, selecting General and clicking iPhone storage. There you can see how much storage space is being used by your photos, music, text messages, e-mail and apps. While you could delete other things to make more space for photos, it would be only a temporary fix because photos use up a lot of memory.

To transfer photos to a computer, connect the iPhone to a PC or Mac via a USB cord.

On a PC, use Windows Explorer (called File Explorer in Windows 10) to view the photos on your phone's "camera roll," then copy them to a file on the PC. (See "How to import photos from iPhone to computer with Windows Explorer" at tinyurl.com/hparl6h).

On a Mac, view and transfer the iPhone photos using either the iPhoto program or the Photos software that replaced iPhoto in 2015. (See "How to transfer photos from iPhone to Mac with iPhoto" or "Import photos from iPhone to Mac with Photos app" at tinyurl.com/y8oszn5l).

Note that you want to use an online service as a repository for all your photos. So, after you upload your existing photos, be sure to turn off the feature that "syncs" your phone with the service — if you don't, deleting a photo on the phone will also delete it from the cloud service. (Avoid using Apple's iCloud Photo Library, which automatically syncs with your iPhone.)

Q: The Microsoft Word program on my Windows Vista PC has stopped printing after six years, although the printer still works with other programs. In addition, the Word program on my Windows 10 PC prints text that is faint, and it won't print boldface text at all. What's wrong?

Len Mongeau, Auburn, N.H.

A: The settings on the Windows Vista PC may have changed. To make sure your printer is the default choice for your PC and Word, see "Choose the right printer" (tinyurl.com/y7k3km96). There's also a troubleshooting guide (tinyurl.com/yag2y3jw).

Malware might also be the problem. Windows Vista is 11 years old and hasn't received security updates since April 2017. You should upgrade to a newer version of Windows.