Handy desktop shortcuts are easy to build, embellish

Thanks to all the Good Booters who thanked me for my article on Desktop shortcuts. Apparently my article encouraged many to exit their computer closet and admit to the world they loved their darlin’ little Desktop shortcuts.

Desktop shortcuts besides being collector items placed by installed programs or web sites you "Send to Desktop", can be useful for reminding you to perform a task or a way to create folders for your special "Stuff".

Displayed on my Desktop are shortcuts to Erunt’s registry backup, IE and Chrome "Favorites" backups, Outlook’s (Outback) backup, DesktopOK’s backup and WinAudit and Belarc utilities. All prominently displayed as backup reminders.

I also have a Desktop folder containing individual shortcuts to my music albums (25 Gigabytes) on an external hard drive.

To create a Desktop shortcut to a program, right click on the program’s .exe file and click "Create a Shortcut". A panel will inform you "Windows cannot create a shortcut here. Do you want the shortcut placed on your Desktop instead?" Click "Yes".

To create a Desktop shortcut to a folder or file, simply right click on the folder or file, click "Send
To" and "Desktop (Create Shortcut)".

You can also use Widows’ Shortcut Wizard to create a shortcut. Right click on your Desktop, click New, Shortcut . Then using the Wizard "Browse" to the item to which you want to create a shortcut.

Once you’ve created a shortcut to a file or folder, if you’d like to add a graphic image to the shortcut to enhance the shortcuts appearance, right click on the shortcut and select "Properties".

Then depending on the panel that opens, click the "Shortcut tab" and "Change Icon" or the "Customize tab" and "Change icon".

You’ll be presented with images you can assign to a file or folder shortcut by clicking on any one of them. You can change a shortcut’s image as often as you like or by using the "Restore" option, return the shortcut to its default image.

Note: when you create a program shortcut it will by default create its own unique shortcut image. Their images can be changed, but to do so you need to know where to browse for image .dll files. I’ll discuss that exercise in a future Good Boot.

One other note: If you really become enthusiastic about adding images to your shortcuts, you can download icons from the Internet or if you’re artistically inclined, create them yourself.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.