In the previous article of the “Taking Control of your Windows Desktop” series, I showed you how to create your own desktop shortcut icons. (You can CLICK HERE to see that video and article). But with Windows 7 we have an even better way for quickly getting to our most used programs.

You can actually pin a shortcut to the taskbar (and even the start menu).

To “pin” a shortcut means to add it as a button to the left side of the Windows taskbar.  This often works better than just adding it ask a dekstop icon since when you have a window open, the desktop is hidden. The taskbar, on the other hand, is always visible which means your pinned shortcuts will be available to you regardless of what you are doing.

[NOTE: In my book, the Windows PC Guidebook I talk in great detail about how to work with the Windows Desktop. CLICK HERE to learn more about the book.]

Click on the video below to see how to pin a shortcut to the taskbar in Windows 7.

Click the lower-right corner button (above) to go Full Screen—>>>

Once the video starts playing, click the “gear” button (above) to change the video quality—>>>

As a summary, the steps are:

  • Go to the Windows Start Menu, and find the icon you want on your desktop
  • RIGHT click the icon
  • From the right-click menu, choose Pin to Taskbar (or Pin to Start Menu)
  • Click away from the Start Menu to close it
  • The icon should now be on your taskbar (or the top of the Start Menu)

As I mentioned, this article and video a part of a mini-series called “Taking Control of your Windows  Desktop”. Here are links to all the articles in the series…

As always, I’d love to hear your experiences or comments. You can leave them below…

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