Adding a ShortCut to the Start Menu

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When I drop a DeskTop Shortcut on the StartMenu (Windows 7×32) it works fine till I delete the ShortCut from the DeskTop!
Any suggestions?

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I right-drag the shortcut to the Start icon, wait for the menu to pop-up, drag it onto the “All Programs”, wait for the menu to switch then drag it to the spot I want and release. I select ‘Copy’ (or ‘Move’)… It does take the extra click of going to the “All Programs” list, but I can safely delete the desktop shortcut at this point…

H.T.H.

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When you drag the shortcut to the task bar you are creating a shortcut to the shortcut. When you delete the original shortcut the one on the taskbar no longer works because it can’t find the shortcut that it references. As Mr. Jiggs said, do it with a right click and drag and choose copy or move. Alternatively you can find the original program in the programs menu, right click it and select pin to taskbar.
The same thing can happen for example if you try to drag an exe file to another location in the Windows Explorer. It won’t copy the file as the default action in to create a shortcut.

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When I drop a DeskTop Shortcut on the StartMenu (Windows 7×32) it works fine till I delete the ShortCut from the DeskTop!
Any suggestions?

The method you’re using is creating a shortcut to the shortcut. That’s why it quits working when you delete the shortcut on the desktop. Mr. Jiggs suggestion will actually copy (or move) the shortcut.

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Mr Jiggs is right… the shortcut will be adderd to the “all programs” Start Menu, but I’m trying to get it on the Main Menu.

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On my Windows 7, when I drag a shortcut and drop it on the Start button, it creates a pinned item at the top of the main Start menu. If I delete the shortcut from the desktop, the pinned item still works for me. To remove the pinned item I right click on the icon in the start menu and choose ‘Unpin from Start Menu’

NH

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The mechanism of adding an item to the Start->All Programs menu without creating a shortcut to a shortcut is fairly simple and unchanged from Win 95 (Win 3?) thru Win 7. The Start>All Programs menu is created dynamically each time you access it. You simply create a shortcut on your desktop and then move it to one of two folders. For shortcuts that you want to have available on Start->All Programs for all user accounts, that folder is “C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart Menu” or “C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms”. With only a single account, Windows uses these two folders when you install a new program; you should use this even with just one account as you never know when you might create a new user account or activate the Guest account.

If you have no intention of ever adding a new user account, activate the Guest account, or limit access to a given program for a single user, you place the shortcut in the “C:UsersusernameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart Menu” or “C:UsersDonAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms” folder. Even with multiple user accounts, you could use this folder for some, but not all, user accounts. If a given program shows up both in this folder and that for all users, Windows eliminates the duplicates when it creates the Start->All Programs menu.

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i use a different method to put shortcuts on my taskbar. This allows me to free up the clutter on my desktop.

I created a new folder called shortcuts in My Documents, then dragged all the desktop Icons for programs into this folder. Next right click on the taskbar, choose toolbars, then new toolbar. Once there point toward the new Shortcut folder and choose Ok. You will now have all these shortcuts in one folder that has a >> to click on to open whatever program you want. You can drag the shortcut back and forth on the task bar to display as much or as little as you want. I keep it so that Shortcut>> is all that is displayed to keep my task bar clear. The >> is the drop down list feature, or to be more precise the drop up in this case.

To add new programs to the folder simply right click on the taskbar “Shortcut” and choose open. The shortcut folder you created will open to allow more shortcuts to be added.

This is the easiest way I know to control the clutter on the desktop.

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