Win 7 Pro quick launch

New windows 7 Professional installation on a new Lenovo t520

How do you put something into quick launch?

On my XP Pro computer I can just drag an icon into the quick launch bar and it's there. On Win 7 that doesn't work and I've searched everywhere I can think of, but every help I find jumps from quick launch to going on about stuff on the task bar and system tray. I find nothing so basic as "How do you put a program in Quick Launch?"

I can imagine it involves that "pinning" thing, but that tells me nothing about how to start and where from. Why can't they just let you drag it for crying out loud?

I should add that I've got a couple programs to drag into QL, but I want a folder in there and it will NOT drag in

Help!

 

Hi

Yes, you are correct that it involves "pinning". You can do one of two things to get it on the Task Bar (the area where you have the "quick launch" buttons). You can right click the shortcut and drag it onto the Task Bar. Or, you can right click the shortcut and simply select "Pin to Task Bar".

You can also easily rearrange the order of the shortcuts you add by dragging them around on the Task Bar.

You can add folders by creating a shortcut to the folder first, then dragging the folder SHORTCUT onto the Task Bar. Simply right click the folder, and select "Create shortcut".

 

Actually it looks to me like you're still talking not about Quick Launch but about taskbar.

 

This was also covered in Sevenforums.com when 7 first launched. I personally pin stuff to the taskbar, or to the Start menu, since it is a whole lot easier than dealing with Quick Launch. I only keep maybe five or six app's on my task that I always use, everything else is either Pinned to the start or I just do a search to pull up what I want to run.

7 makes things better, due to getting rid of the leftovers from the 9x series Windows.

 

I misunderstood... I guess I didn't even realize or think to check that Windows 7 had an actual "quick launch" feature, since the task bar is so simple to use for shortcuts. However, I'm pretty sure you can drag a shortcut to a folder to it (quick launch) all the same.

 

Hi mcsmc,

Just dragging the shortcut to the folder doesn't quite work because it gets pinned to the jump list for the standard Explorer icon that is already on the Taskbar. So you still only have one Explorer icon which you have to right click to choose your folder.

I found this way back when Win7 first came out and it still works. You have to do parts 1 and 3 to pin a folder to the taskbar. Part 3 is just to get a meaningful icon. I have color coded folder icons that I browse to for the icon change.

I haven't tried this automated tool yet because I got used to not having each folder I frequent pinned to the taskbar but I guess it accomplishes the same thing.

 

Plodr's reference (a little way down the page) gives a slightly involved set-up, but it gives you a much quicker, less involved way of including programs and folders and popping up what you want to use.

No doubt 7 has a lot of power, but it is so involved getting anywhere in it - layer upon layer to dig through, and always telling me that altho I'm admin I don't have permission to access to whatever. It's exhausting to me. Of course given that I started computing at middle age in the '70's that isn't that surprising.

 

Yes, it is annoying when UAC still takes over on 7. I use nothing but Windows 7 pro on the two workstations I maintain here in the house, but use Ubuntu 11.10 on my netbook. The part about 7 is, that you need to "own" pretty much every folder, etc to get around the issues where it chokes.

I tried the whole quick launch thing when I first started to play with 7, when it first came out, but gave it up, since I liked the pinning feature better, and only really pin maybe 6 total. Now at work, until we move up to 7, I use the quick launch the same way as I do for 7, by placing those programs I have to use all of the time down there.

Now, the one great thing about 7 vs XP, same with Vista, is that you do not have a loaded taskbar area with blocks from the open programs. Plus if you are running Aero, AeroPeek on the icons comes in real helpful when swapping windows or tasks inside of a program.