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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME Drag the icon for an entire folder to the Favorites menu and windows will automatically create a shortcut in the Favorites list. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 My favorite 'Favorites' menu tricks: Put anything in the listFeb. 6, 2002 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard The Favorites menu is where you store Web shortcuts. Wouldn't it be great if you could put other shortcuts there, too? Ah, but you can. I'll tell you how. My tips are based on the Windows version of the Favorites menu. I don't know if they work on the Macintosh version. Open Internet Explorer and move it a little out of the way so you get some room on your desktop. (Feel free to make the IE window small if that helps.) We'll use one of the shortcuts on your desktop as an example. You probably have a lot of shortcuts on your desktop, so pick one that is a program shortcut (one that launches a program, in other words). Click on that shortcut icon once and hold the button down. (Use the left mouse button for all of this.) With the button held down, drag the icon over to the top of the Internet Explorer window, where the menus are, until it is hovering over the word "Favorites." In other words, you'll be holding the shortcut icon motionless over the top of the Favorites menu. Keep hold of that icon. The Favorites menu will open, and you'll be able to drag it to any subfolder within the menu. drop it into any of the subfolders and let it go. (If you don't have any subfolders, just let it go on top of the Favorites list once the menu opens. But I can't imagine anyone who doesn't have at least a few subfolders.) You now have a program launcher in your Favorites menu. Click it and it launches a program. Is that neat or not? You can do the same thing for other kinds of shortcuts, too. You can drag the "My Documents" icon there. You can drag "My Computer" there. (Windows might give you a warning message about making a shortcut; if so, just go along with it.) That was easy, right? Because you've been so good at this, I'll give you bonus: You don't have to drag a shortcut there. Anything qualifies. Drag the icon for an entire folder to the Favorites menu and windows will automatically create a shortcut in the Favorites list. Drag an icon for a document and you get a shortcut. And in just a few clicks you've turned your Favorites menu into a second Start menu. When you're running Internet Explorer, you won't need to mouse around on another part of the screen to launch a program or open a folder. You can do it right from your browser. |