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Tip #745 - Icon Hide & Seek

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Icon Hide & Seek

Do you have awesome wallpaper that's obscured by all those nasty little icons cluttering your desktop ? Well, here's how to make them all disappear, at least temporarily:

Win 95 / 98 instructions:

First, you're going to need to have Active Desktop installed and active. If you have IE 4.0 or better, you're probably all set in this department. Here's the blow by blow:

1. First, open My Computer or Windows Explorer . From the View menu , go to Folder Options , then click the View tab .

2. Now, under the Visual Settings section, click the " Hide icons when the desktop is viewed as a web page " checkbox. Hit OK .

If you already had your desktop set to be viewed as a web page, you'll find all your icons have magically disappeared. To get them back, right-click the desktop and select Active Desktop, then click the "View as web page" menu item. That will shut off the "view as web page" property and all your icons will re-appear. Right-click and repeat the procedure to get rid of them again.

Win ME / 2000 Instructions:

1. Right-click your Desktop and select Active Desktop from the resulting menu. A sub menu will pop up. If the Active Desktop item doesn't have a check next to it, click it (Win 2000 users need to make sure the "show web content" item is checked instead).

2. From the same sub-menu mentioned above, click the " Show desktop icons " menu item to turn them on or off.

Win XP Instructions

This one is actually the easiest of the bunch- if you know where to look.

Just right-click your Desktop , Arrange Icons By , then click the " Show Desktop Icons " item.

Why the PhD's at Microsoft decided it was a good idea to stick the "Show Desktop Icons" item under the "Arrange Icons" menu is a head scratcher for sure, but that's where it is.

~ Steve

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