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How To August 1999 • Vol.5 Issue 8 |
Manage Shortcuts | ||
 One reason the Windows operating system is so easy to use is because it allows users to create shortcuts. Shortcuts are links to objects such as programs, data files, directories, drives, and printers. By creating a shortcut, users can speed up access to those resources by double-clicking the shortcut instead of digging through files and folders to find the item they want to open. Most of the time, shortcuts are easy to spot because they have a little curved arrow in their lower-left corner. Many shortcuts also have the phrase "Shortcut to" in their titles. (NOTE: In Windows 98, Windows will take note if you usually remove the "Shortcut to" phrase from your shortcuts. If you do continually remove it, Windows 98 will stop adding the phrase to your new shortcuts.)  Creating Shortcuts. Windows 95 and 98 (Win95 and 98) support numerous methods of creating shortcuts. The easiest method, however, is to right-click the object for which you want to create a shortcut and then select Create Shortcut from the pop-up menu. Because Windows will create the shortcut in the same place you are currently working, you will need to drag and drop it to its new location. For quick access to items, you will want to add shortcuts to the Desktop. There are two good methods for doing this. The first is to right-click an empty space on the Desktop, select New, and then Shortcut. This will open a wizard that will walk you through the steps of creating a shortcut. The second option is to open the directory that contains the item, right-click the item, drag it to the Desktop, and then select Create Shortcut(s) Here from the pop-up menu. For the quickest access to your files and programs, you can place shortcuts in your Start Menu. To do this, click the Start button, Settings, and then Taskbar (Taskbar & Start Menu in Win98). Next, click the Start Menu Programs tab, click the Add button in the Customize Start Menu section, and then follow the on-screen directions to add the shortcut. You will also find that many of the programs you install will automatically place shortcuts on the Desktop when you install them. If you need to identify the file or program to which a shortcut points, you can right-click the icon, select Properties from the pop-up menu, and click the Shortcut tab. You will see the name of the underlying file in the Target box. To go to the "target," click the Find Target button.
Renaming Shortcuts. Because Windows' automatic naming of shortcuts is wordy, you may want to rename some of your shortcuts with your own names. To do this, right-click your shortcut, select the Rename command from the pop-up menu, type in a new name, and press ENTER. Renaming a shortcut will not affect the underlying file in any way. Deleting Shortcuts. When you no longer need a shortcut, you can easily delete it. Before you take that step, however, you will want to note the differences between working with a regular icon and a shortcut icon. When you move, copy, or delete a regular icon, you also move, copy, or delete the actual file. Deleting a shortcut, however, only deletes the small shortcut file (.LNK), it does not delete the underlying file. For this reason, you can safely delete most shortcuts, including those on the Desktop. Of course, deleting a shortcut will remove its functionality. If you accidentally remove a shortcut, you must find the underlying program and recreate the shortcut. To delete a shortcut, you can drag it to the Recycle Bin or right-click the file and select Delete from the pop-up menu. If you want to delete a shortcut in the Start Menu, click the Start menu, select Settings, and then click Taskbar or Taskbar & Start Menu. Next, click the Start Menu Programs tab. Then, in the Customize Start Menu section, click the Remove button and follow the on-screen instructions. Drawbacks. Even though shortcuts are wonderful, time-saving tools, they do have a few small drawbacks. For example, when you delete a certain file or program from your system, the shortcuts are left behind. Over time, this causes your computer to become littered with inactive shortcuts, which eats up memory space. (Yes, even though most shortcut files are only about 400 bytes in size, they can eat up valuable space on your hard drive.) While you can use the Find command (Start menu, Find) to locate all shortcuts (search for *.lnk), Windows lacks a tool for flagging the inactive files. This means you must decide which are inactive and delete them yourself. This is, at best, a tedious process.  by Ronny Richardson |
