Here are some hints for working with your Start Menu:
 | Placing a shortcut on your desktop (for a program buried in your start menu) |
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Adding Programs from your Desktop directly to the top level of your Start Menu |
How to Put a Shortcut on Your Desktop
Did you ever want to put a shortcut to an often-used program right on your desktop, so you wouldn’t have to navigate all through the Start/Programs menus to find it each time? Well, now you can.
First, make sure you know where to find the program in the Start menu. For our example, we will use the Calculator, which is in Start/Programs/Accessories.
There are methods here for both
Windows 95 and Windows 98.
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Step one is to right-click (click with the right mouse button) on the Start button in the lower left corner of your screen. A pop-up menu will appear. Select Explore by clicking it normally (with the left mouse button). |
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A Windows Explorer window will open with the Windows/Start Menu folder visible in the left pane of the Explorer window. (If Explorer opens full screen, click the middle of the three buttons in the upper right corner to shrink it so that you can see some of your desktop area around it.) The Start Menu folder will be open, and a sub-folder, Programs, will be visible beneath it. |
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| There will be a plus sign (+) to the left of the Programs folder, indicating that there are more folders beneath it. (The Programs folder shown is the same as the Programs item near the top of your Start Menu which is visible when you click the Start Button.) | ||||
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For now, left-click the plus sign (+) that is next to the Programs folder in the left pane of Explorer. |
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A list of the subfolders under the Programs folder will open up in the left pane. These subfolders are the same as the groups that appear on your Start/Programs menu. The program we want is in the Accessories folder, so we click once with the left mouse button to select and open the Accessories folder. The contents of the Accessories folder appears in the right pane of the Explorer window. |
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With the Accessories folder open, we can see its contents in the right pane. The program for which we want to put a shortcut on the desktop, Calculator, can be seen in the right pane. Click only once on Calculator with the left mouse button to select it. Now, click and hold the right mouse button, and while the right mouse button is still depressed, drag Calculator out of the Explorer window onto a blank area of your desktop. |
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Once you get the Calculator icon right-dragged onto the desktop, release the right mouse button. You will get a pop-up menu with a number of choices. Click the left mouse button on the menu item Create Shortcut(s) Here. |
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Once you click on Create Shortcut(s) Here, a new icon will be created on your desktop with the shortcut arrow and the name of your program. (Sometimes the name will be Shortcut to … You can edit this name to anything you want by right-clicking the shortcut and choosing Rename.) If you can’t see the new shortcut, it may have been created under one of your open windows. Just close or move the open windows and you will see your new shortcut. |
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You can use this same method to create shortcuts on your desktop for other programs and data files. Simply find the file in Windows Explorer, right-drag it to the desktop, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here. |
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Step one is to navigate on the Start Menu to where the item is that you want on the desktop. In this case, we click Start, then click Programs, then click Accessories. We can now see the Calculator program name. |
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Click the Calculator program name with the right mouse button, and drag it onto an open area of your desktop. |
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Once you get the Calculator icon right-dragged onto the desktop, release the right mouse button. You will get a pop-up menu with a number of choices. Click the left mouse button on the menu item Create Shortcut(s) Here. |
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Once you click on Create Shortcut(s) Here, a new icon will be created on your desktop with the shortcut arrow and the name of your program. (Sometimes the name will be Shortcut to … You can edit this name to anything you want by right-clicking the shortcut and choosing Rename.) If you can’t see the new shortcut, it may have been created under one of your open windows. Just close or move the open windows and you will see your new shortcut. |
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You can use this same method to create shortcuts on your desktop for other programs and data files. Simply find the file in the Start Menu, right-drag it to the desktop, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here. |
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Re-Arranging Programs on Your Start Menu
You can use some of the same techniques to rearrange the programs on your Start Menu. Just right-click the Start button, select Explore, expand the Programs folder by left-clicking its plus sign, and find the folder you want to rearrange. You can create new folders under the Programs folder (for example, a Utilities folder) and move other folders and icons into it. Just be careful and keep track of what you are doing, or you may misplace some of your icons and have trouble launching programs. If you make a mistake or can't figure out what happened, hit CTRL-Z to undo the last activity.
Adding Programs Directly To The Start Menu
If you have an icon on your desktop that you use frequently, you may want to add it directly to the Start Menu so that it will be available quickly when you either hit the Start Button, hit the special Windows Logo key on your keyboard, or hit the CTRL-ESC key sequence. Just left-drag the icon from the desktop and "drop" it on the Start button. Now, when you click the Start Button, it will be there, just above the word "Programs".
