Little-known trick in Windows can minimize programs automatically

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A simple change to a program's shortcut can make it start up already minimized.

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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Little-known trick in Windows can minimize programs automatically as soon as they start up

Aug. 26, 2001

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, The Syracuse Newspapers

   On my Windows launchbar are two icons for my e-mail program. One runs it the standard way. The other runs it in a very special way. Instead of opening the program on my screen, the second launch icon runs my e-mail program in stealth mode. It hides itself away as soon as it starts running. It takes up no room on the screen at all -- yet I can pop it back onto the screen in an instant.
   What high-price software did I buy to enable this special way of running my mail program?
   I didn't pay a cent. I didn't download any freeware programs to do it, either. What I'm doing is built into Windows. You can do it, too.
   And you can do it for any other program. I mentioned my e-mail software, Microsoft Outlook, because it's the single most important program on my main PC. I like to have it running most of the time, but I don't want it to hog the screen unless I'm reading the mail. At other times, I just want to have it handy, running in the background, getting my mail every few minutes.
   The secret? I take advantage of one of the coolest features of Windows. These days, with Microsoft under fire for its bullying of the rest of the software industry, it's easy to forget that the monopoly operating system Microsoft created is very clever in many ways. One of the best examples of this is the way you can make any program start up out of sight and out of the way.
   Programs that run this way are minimized. A minimized program is running normally but has no presence on the screen. The only evidence of a minimized program is its entry on the Taskbar.
   You probably already know how to minimize a program that's already running. You click the "Minimize" button at the top right of the program's window. It looks like an underline. (It's suppose to look like something that's been pushed down to minimal size, I suppose.) To bring the program back onto the screen, you click the program's entry label on the Windows Taskbar.
   It's an elegant way of clearing stuff off your screen. You get your screen's real estate back -- even the largest displays can get crowded these days -- and you're never more than a single click away from popping the program back into full view.
   Most Windows users stop right there. What they're missing is that special launch technique I was telling you about. A simple change to a program's shortcut can make it start up already minimized.
   Here's how to do it. Locate the shortcut you want to modify and click your right mouse button on it. Slide your pointer to the bottom of the menu that opens and click your left button on "Properties." Click the "Shortcut" tab at the top of the window. Next to the word "Run:" you'll see a drop-down list. Click on it top open it and then click "Minimized." Click "OK" to close the window.
   (If you have a later version of Windows, you can modify shortcuts by right-clicking on any shortcut in the Start Menu. You can't do that in Windows 95, however. In Windows 95, to change entries in the Start Menu, right click on the Start Button and left click "Open." Navigate to the shortcut you want to change and use the technique I explained above.)
   A bonus: You'll see other options in the list that drops down when you are setting up a program to start out minimized. One of them is "Maximized." If your PC uses a low-resolution display of 640 pixels by 480 pixels, you might prefer to have complicated programs such as your e-mail software start up with the largest possible window size. That's what "Maximized" does.
   You'll also see "Normal window" as one of the choices. That's the Windows default, so you won't have to choose that unless you are changing a shortcut that had been using "Minimized" or "Maximized."
   Note that these three options aren't just for programs. You can do the same for folder windows. If you create a shortcut to a folder, you can treat that shortcut's properties the same way you treat the properties of a program's shortcut.