Pin icons to the taskbar and restore Quick Launch
For the programs you use most often, it makes sense to pin them to the taskbar. To do this, launch them, then right-click their icons on the taskbar and select ‘Pin to taskbar’ (see screenshot above right). When you next close them, their icons will remain in view so you can quickly start them again.
Each icon you add to the taskbar will link only to a single location. If you want quick access to multiple icons for
your most important files or shortcuts, you can instead add a toolbar, as we demonstrated above using the desktop folder. If you’re a Windows veteran, you may remember something similar called Quick Launch, where you could store links to programs or locations you use frequently. It appeared beside the Windows menu in Windows XP and Vista, but disappeared in Windows 7. This was technically just sleight of hand on Microsoft’s part, however, because Quick Launch still exists – as long as you know where to find it.
As you would when creating a regular toolbar, start by right-clicking the taskbar, then hover over Toolbars and click ‘New toolbar…’. This opens a File Explorer window. Type the following into the Folder box and press Return, then click Select Folder: %Userprofile%\appdata\roaming\ Microsoft\internet Explorer\quick Launch If that’s too tricky to type, cut and paste it from our Pastebin account instead: www. snipca.com/38988.
This immediately adds Quick Launch to the right of your taskbar. Click the >> icon to the right of it to view its default contents. These might not be
the programs you want to link to, so to make it really useful you’ll need to tweak whatever appears.
Open a new Explorer window, then click in the ‘Quick access’ address bar at the top and enter the address you typed above to open the Quick Launch folder. When the window refreshes, you’ll see that the folder contains a number of shortcut icons. To get rid of any, rightclick them then press Delete. Next, right-click in a blank area, hover over New in the menu that appears
( 1 in our screenshot below left), then click Shortcut 2 in the next menu that appears. Next, click the Browse button and select the program you want to add to the Quick Launch toolbar, then click OK. Optionally change the shortcut name (for example, if you’re adding Opera you may want to name the shortcut Web Browser for anyone who doesn’t know what Opera is), then click OK.
You can add folders to the Quick Launch toolbar in just the same way, by selecting them rather than a program. You might expect the result to be similar to what you achieved when you created a toolbar from the desktop folder, earlier, which presented all of its icons in a scrollable list. This may be an overwhelming result in the Quick Launch area, so instead of displaying the contents, clicking the link opens the folder in its own Explorer window. This is a quick, neat solution that gives you direct access to several of the files you use most often without navigating Windows’ file system folder by folder through Explorer.