Windows 7 provides you with lots of customization options to easily personalize your Windows taskbar. If you’ve ever tried the “Pin to taskbar” feature, you will notice that this great little feature enables you to permanently put your frequently used program shortcuts on your taskbar.
Another way to quickly access your favorite programs, folders as well as internet shortcuts is by creating a custom toolbar in your Windows taskbar. This feature is available on all versions of Windows and people using Windows Vista, XP and other older versions too can try out this awesome feature.
Windows makes it very easy for you to create a custom toolbar in your Windows taskbar. If you find it difficult to do so, just follow the step-by-step guide given below.
1. Create a New Folder in any location on your computer. Let’s name it “My Shortcuts”.
2. Now, copy your favorite program shortcuts, internet shortcuts, etc. into the “My Shortcuts” folder. For the sake of convenience, you can organize these shortcuts into sub-folders. Windows will create menus for every sub-folder.
3. After copying all the shortcuts into the folder, right-click on your taskbar and select Toolbars -> New toolbar (Make sure you right-click on the empty part of the taskbar). The New Toolbar dialog box will open.
4. Select the folder in which you have copied all the shortcut files (In this example, “My Shortcuts”). Then, click on Select Folder.
5. The new toolbar will instantly appear on the taskbar. Click on the double-right arrows (>>) next to the toolbar name to view the stored shortcuts. Click on any shortcut to quickly launch the program.
If you want to add more shortcuts, just copy them to the “My Shortcuts” folder or drag & drop the shortcuts on the double-right arrows of the toolbar. You can quickly navigate to the “My Shortcuts” folder by right clicking on the toolbar name (i.e My Shortcuts) and selecting Open Folder.
This is really an easy way to create a custom toolbar to have one-click access to all your favorite programs and files. If you know any other similar tricks, do let us know.
I just got Windows 7 and previously used XP.
I want to move the tool bar to the right hand side of my desktop and fade in/out when moving the mouse over it.
This helped me add it on the bottom tool bar but I want it to be it’s own tool bar placed to the right.
Thank you,
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with the ability to pin applications to the taskbar. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks.