The Computer Tutor

When you’re online, do you find yourself constantly having to manually type in your name and address when creating a new account? Here’s how to do that with one click.

You know what I’m talking about. You see something on the internet you want to purchase, and it’s for sale on some website where you haven’t bought anything in the past. So you need to create an account.

That means you have to type in your full name, your street address, your city and state, your zip or postal code, your phone number, etc. These are all things you’ve typed out a hundred times before. Why can’t your computer just remember these things and enter them FOR you.

Good news – it can!

This is a great feature that’s available in Chrome. I’m sure it’s in the other browsers as well, but I use Chrome mostly so that’s what I’ll be referring to here.

Chrome will store all of that personal identity information inside a special section in Chrome settings. Then, when you go to a website form that asks you to fill all of that out, Chrome recognizes that it’s a form and what it’s asking for, and offers you the option to have it all automatically completed.

Here’s how you set this up:

In Chrome, click the 3 dots up in the top right, then click on Settings

Now look for the section called “Autofill” and click on “Addresses and more”

Now, where it says “Save and fill addresses”, make sure that switch is turned on (to the right). And click the Add button to enter your address information –

In the next window that opens, you enter your information. There are places for your country, name, organization, street address, city, state, zip, phone and email –

Click Save and you’re done.

Now, if you want to test this, go and create a new account somewhere online. You’ll see that when you place your cursor in the “Name” field (or any of the other fields on that form), Chrome will offer you the option to auto-fill the form with whatever information you have stored.

A couple of things to also keep in mind:

First, you can store more than one set of info. For example, you might have a physical address, and a different address (such as PO Box) that you use for mail purposes. These can be stored separately and you can just use the appropriate one when needed.

Second, you can also store payment methods (such as your credit card information) in Chrome, but I don’t recommend doing that. I also don’t recommend storing your account passwords in Chrome. If anyone gets access to your computer (such as if it were to get lost or stolen), or someone hacks into your computer, they can get access to that information that is stored in Chrome and it could mean a huge headache for you.