I have seen it time and time again. A client has a Windows desktop that is completely covered with dozens of icons — a veritable sea of Word, Excel, and Adobe reader files. I often ask, “How do you find what you need?” And the response I get is that it takes a while, but they know where something is (eventually).
Would you like to be a little more organized than that? If so, then I suggest you try these two built-in features of Windows 7 to help you:
- Jump Lists
- Pin program to Start Menu
You can quickly open recent documents using Jump Lists
Jump Lists are very handy when you run a lot of applications because they let you quickly bring up the recent ones. There are two ways to open a Jump List.
- Open the Start menu and click the arrow to the right of the program name.
- Right click a program icon in the Windows task bar.
As you can see, this is a lot easier than looking through dozens of icons on your desktop, or opening up your Documents folder to look for a file name.
Display more items on a Jump List
If you get the hang of using Jump Lists, you’ll probably find you want to display more than 10 items. To customize your Jump Lists, right-click the Windows task bar, click Properties, then select the Start Menu tab. Click the Customize button. At the bottom of the Customize Start Menu dialog box, you can adjust the number of items displayed in your Jump Lists.
Pin programs to the Start Menu
I probably abuse this at times, but the Start menu is a very good place from which to launch frequently used programs without cluttering up the desktop. To pin a program to the Start menu, click All Programs and locate one you use frequently. Right-click the program name, then select Pin to Start Menu from the list.
Once you’ve set these features up, you can eliminate the icons from your desktop. Everything you need to work on your documents can be obtained through these new shortcuts.
But I want to issue one cautionary note: If you have saved a document to the Desktop, move it to the Documents folder first. Do not simply delete it!