From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

Sending favorites to the desktop

From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Sending favorites to the desktop

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- [Instructor] I'm not going to debate desktop icon philosophy. You can have an empty desktop like this one, or one packed with icons, or something between. Regardless, the desktop is a great place to put your favorites, folders, programs, or files you use frequently. And here's how this trick works. First, locate the item you want to send to the desktop. For programs, tap the Windows key. And pop up the Start menu and scroll to browse or just start typing the name, such as Excel. Right-click on the result and choose open file location. Now you could perform this trick here. But this is really just a folder representation of the programs on the Start menu. See the address bar? Start Menu, Programs? No you really want to go to where the file truly dwells. So right-click on the file icon again, choose open file location. And here you can use the trick. Right-click the highlighted file, the program you need. Choose send to. And then desktop create shortcut. And close the File Explorer window. And there you see your icon on the desktop. For files you use frequently, put their shortcuts on the desktop. So here I am in my work folder and you see my Daily Exercise chart. Right-click. Send to desktop create shortcut. And it's the same thing with folders. So here's my current project folder. Right-click. Send to, desktop create shortcut. Now you can organize these files any way you want. So for example, you could put files over here on the right and then keep programs on the left, or put them on the top of the screen. Just wherever it's convenient for you. It is your desktop. These icons are all shortcuts as seen by the text shortcut. But also this little flag that appears on the icons that tells you it is a shortcut. So if you want to get rid of one of them, it doesn't really hurt to drag it to the Recycle Bin. As you're only deleting the shortcut. Now the desktop might not always be visible. For example, I'll pop up a Windows Explorer window. If you ever need to access the desktop quickly, here's the handy shortcut. Press the Windows + D keyboard combination. And you can see the desktop. And then access your shortcut files, which should always be handy.

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