Pin a Drive or Folder to the Windows 7 Taskbar
The Windows Explorer icon on the Windows 7 taskbar gives you easy access to your Libraries, but it's more likely that you want to go to a specific folder or even the root of a particular drive. You can pin common locations to the Windows Explorer jump list, of course (and I recently explained how to do just that), but what if I told you it was easy to add a dedicated icon to the task bar which opened any folder or drive with a single click?
gHacks recently explained the nuts and bolts of adding a drive to the task bar. It's a fairly simple process, but doing it will make you feel like a hacker. I've taken gHack's instructions and generalized it to pin any folder to the taskbar, rather than just the root of a drive:
- 1. Right -click the desktop and choose New, Text Document.
- 2. Rename the document to anything you like, such as Drive D.exe or Budget Folder.exe. Be sure the file extension is .exe. (You might need to open Folder and Search Options and clear the checkbox for Hide extensions for known file types.)
- 3. Drag the icon to the taskbar and then delete the file from the desktop.
- 4. Right-click the icon on the taskbar, mouse over the file name, right-click the name, and then select Properties.
- 5. Enter the complete path to the drive or folder you want the icon to open in both the Target and Start in fields (something like C: or C:UsersDaveDocumentsBooks). Click OK.
