Windows 7 Feature Focus: Desktop, Taskbar and Start Menu

Posted 08/17/2009 at 6:45pm | by Mark Edward Soper

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Pinning Power

"Pinning" (the ability to keep shortcuts to programs and files on a list as long as you want them there) has reached new heights in Windows 7. You can pin programs to the newly-remodeled taskbar as well as the Start menu. And, with a little chicanery, you can use "pinning power" to make frequently-used files easy to find in both places from the new Jump List display of current and recent files.

If you've already opened a program, you're more than halfway to pinning it to the taskbar or the Start menu. To pin the program to the taskbar, right-click its taskbar icon and select Pin This Program to Taskbar.

To pin a program to the Start menu, right-click the program icon from either pane of the Start menu and select Pin to Start Menu. You can also pin the program to the Taskbar from this menu:

Pinning Power for Files

You can also use "pinning power" to make access to frequently-used files easier. Windows 7 supports the Jump List, which is a list of recently-opened files maintained by some programs. To see if you can pin the file to the program that hosts it, start the program and open the file, then close it. Then, right-click the program icon in the taskbar and see if the file is listed under Recent in the Jump List. If it is, move your mouse over the data file listing and click the push-pin icon.

The file is now pinned to the program's jump list

From the Taskbar, you can open the file by right-clicking on the program icon and selecting the file from the Pinned menu. Because the file has been pinned to the program's jump list, it will stay on the list no matter how many other files you have opened (and closed).

Pinned data files are also easy to open from the Start menu's left pane. Open the Start menu. Click the right pointer to display the program's jump list.

Click the right pointer to view a jump list of recent and pinned data files. If you need to pin a data file to the program, highlight the file and click the push pin icon. To open either a pinned or recent file, click the file.