Tip #925 - Make Your Own Toolbar
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Make Your Own Toolbar
Wouldn't it be nice to make your own toolbar to
use just like the start menu? It's really easy to do, and can be quite useful.
For this tip I will show you how to make a new start menu with only the folders
and shortcuts you want. This can also be used to make a menu of commonly used
documents or any other files.
First, you need to open Windows
Explorer and create a new folder. Open Windows Explorer by going to
the start menu and finding its icon (with XP, just right-click Start and
select " Explore "). Once in Windows Explorer, find your main hard drive
(usually C) and click to open it. Next, make a new folder by choosing File
(at the top of the window), then New , and then Folder . Name the folder
anything you want, I used "New Start Menu".
Next you need to add the shortcuts or documents you want to this new folder.
If you want to pull shortcuts from the start menu, that's really easy. Leave
Explorer open, and go to the start menu, find the shortcut or folder you want,
and hold down the right mouse button while dragging it to the folder we made
in Windows Explorer.
From the menu that appears, select " Copy here ". Do this for all the items
you want from your start menu. If you would like to make shortcuts to programs
other than those in the start menu, you must first find them on your hard drive.
Then you can right click and drag them to the new folder. This time select "Create
Shortcut" instead of copy. To put commonly used documents in this folder, find
them, and left click and drag them to the new folder. This will move the document
from its current location to the folder we created.
Now that we have created the folder we need for the toolbar it is time to
make the actual toolbar. You can now close Windows Explorer if you want. Right
click any empty spot on your taskbar .
A menu will appear; the top item on the menu is "Toolbars". Select that, and
click on "New Toolbar...". In the window that appears find your hard drive
again, and then find the folder that we made. Click the name of the folder
once, and then click the OK button.
Now you will see the name of the folder on your taskbar with two arrows next
to it. If you click the arrows, something very similar to the start menu pops
up. It works pretty much the same way but has less junk in it than your start
menu did.
Pretty neat huh? Of course you could also use this toolbar for only documents.
For example, I have one that contains all the movies I have on my computer.
It's a lot nicer than opening explorer to find them every time I want to watch
one.
~Kyle Larson
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