Do you have one or two programs that run your life? Yeah. Me, too. Word and Outlook. I use them day in and day out. I dream in Word. Sad but true. Windows XP enables you to easily put programs of your choice way up at the top, in the upper-left corner of the Start menu. That’s the high-rent district, the place my mouse gravitates to every time I click Start. I don’t know why, but Microsoft calls this “pinning” kind of a wimpy name for the most powerful feature on the Start menu, eh? If you have Office 2003 on your computer, chances are good that the Office installer pinned Outlook 2003 on your Start menu as your e-mail program. Here’s how you pin Word 2003 (the word processing program from Microsoft Office 2003) on your Start menu. The procedure for any other program works similarly:

1. Both Word 2003 and Outlook 2003 are on the All Programs menu, so pinning them is easy. Choose Start -> All Programs; then right-click on the program and choose Pin To Start Menu. If you pin a program on the Start menu by right-clicking on it and choosing Pin to Start Menu, Windows creates a second entry in the Start menu for the pinned copy. Your original the program you right-clicked on stays where it was. You can also drag and drop a program from anywhere in Windows onto the pinned list. When the program gets pinned, it appears at the bottom of the pinned pile which is to say, below your Web browser and e-mail program. You can left-click on the program and drag it to any other spot in the pinned list that you like.

2. Right-click on the program and choose Rename; then give the program a name that you can live with. If you pin a program on the Start menu by right-clicking on it and choosing Pin to Start Menu, both the original Start menu entry and the new pinned entry are linked. If you change the name on one (right-click and choose Rename), the other copy is changed as well. You can remove any program in the pinned part of the Start menu. If you right-click either of the built-in pinned programs (marked Internet and E-mail) and choose Remove From This List, the program is removed. If you right-click any other pinned programs (presumably ones that you put up in the high-rent district, or ones that your computer’s manufacturer so graciously added to the list), choose Unpin from Start Menu and the item goes away. Note that unpinning a program removes it from only the pinned list in the upper-left corner of the Start menu.

The program itself stays right where it is. So do any other shortcuts to the program, whether they’re elsewhere on the Start menu or somewhere else in your computer, such as on your desktop. Reclaiming most recently used programs Directly above the Start button, in the lower-left corner of the Start menu, you find a list of the programs that you’ve used most recently. This list is really handy: It is updated dynamically as you use programs, so you always have a very good chance of seeing the program you need right there on the list. When you run a program that’s pinned to the upper-left corner of the Start menu (see the preceding section), it doesn’t count: The most recently used list includes only programs that aren’t up at the top of the Start menu. At least, that’s the theory. In fact, the most recently used counter that controls what shows up in the most recently used programs box isn’t quite kosher. If you play with the list for a while, you discover that the programs higher up in the list tend to stay on the list longer whether you’ve used them or not.

So Windows Media Player and MSN Explorer tend to hang around a whole lot longer than the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (which you would expect), and many programs that you happen to run (which you probably wouldn’t expect). Fortunately, you can easily get rid of all the built-in most recently used programs and start out with a clean slate:

1. Right-click on the Start button and choose Properties.

2. On the Start menu tab, make sure that Start menu is checked, and click Customize.

3. On the General tab, in the middle of the Customize Start Menu dialog box 4. While you’re here, consider switching to smaller icons which puts more programs on the Start menu in a smaller slice of real estate, although they’ll be smaller and thus harder to hit with your mouse and adding to the Number of Programs on the Start menu. The Windows Customize Start Menu dialog box says that you can set the Number of Programs on Start menu. That isn’t true. In fact, the number shown is actually the number of programs that appear in the most recently used box, in the lower-left corner of the Start menu.

5. Click OK twice, and your most recently used program list starts to reflect the programs that, uh, you have most recently used. Windows maintains the most recently used program list on its own: You cannot drag and drop items on the list. You can, however, remove programs from the list. Just right-click on an offending program and choose Remove From This List.

Showing recent documents

Some people love the recent documents feature. Most people hate it. That’s why Microsoft turned it off in the final, shipping version of Windows XP. In most normal circumstances with well-behaved programs that don’t crash Windows keeps track of which documents you’ve opened. Folks who like the feature appreciate being able to retrieve documents quickly and easily, without spelunking for the program that created them: Click on a Word document in the My Recent Documents folder, and Word comes to life, with the document open and ready to rumble. Folks who hate the feature would just as soon open the application and use the application’s most recently opened file list (typically on the File menu) to retrieve their documents. Some of the curmudgeons present company definitely included don’t particularly want to leave (yet another) record of what they’ve been doing lying around for prying eyes. To turn on My Recent Documents:

1. Right-click Start and choose Properties.

2. On the Start Menu tab, make sure Start Menu is checked, and click Customize.

3. On the Advanced tab, select the List My Most Recently Opened Documents check box. Note that you can return to this location to clear out the list. But clearing the list here does not clear similar lists in your applications, such as Word or Internet Explorer. For those, you have to refer to the application itself.

Making minor tweaks to the Start menu

You can make a number of additional changes to the Start menu. Some of them are actually useful, particularly if you go into your computer fairly frequently to jiggle things. To tweak:

1. Right-click Start and choose Properties.

2. On the Start Menu tab, make sure Start Menu is checked, and click Customize.

3. Click the Advanced tab and select the features you want to enable, based on the following list. Click OK twice. The following six Start menu items can be turned into fly-out menus:

 -  Control Panel: This item can show all of the “classic applets” (read: all of the individual Control Panel applications) in a fly-out menu. That’s the Display As a Menu option in the Start Menu Items list.

 -  Favorites: This item creates a menu that can appear above My Computer, with Favorites (primarily from Internet Explorer) listed on a fly-out menu. To show Favorites, select the Favorites check box in the Start Menu Items list.

 -  My Computer: This item can have its own fly-out menu, listing your drives, as well as the Control Panel (which now appears twice on the Start menu), My Documents (again), and Shared Documents. Enable the fly-out menu by selecting the Display As a Menu option in the Start Menu Items list.

 -  My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures: These items can all have their own fly-out menus listing files and folders in each. Select the Display As a Menu check box on the relevant Start Menu Items list. If you’re an inveterate twiddler (or twiddler-in-training), in the Start Menu Items list, select the System Administrative Tools/Display on the All Programs Menu check box. The programs there will keep you occupied for years.

Creating Your Own Shortcuts

Sometimes, life’s easier with shortcuts. (As long as the shortcuts work, anyway.) So, too, in the Windows XP realm, where shortcuts point to things that can be started. You may set up a shortcut to Word and put it on your desktop. Double-click on the Word shortcut, and Word starts, the same way as if you chose Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Word. You can set up shortcuts that point to the following:

 -  Programs of any kind  

-  Web addresses such as www.woodyswatch.com/signup  

-  Documents, spreadsheets, databases, PowerPoint presentations, and anything else that can be started in Windows Explorer by double-clicking on it

 -  Specific chunks of text inside documents, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, and so on (they’re called scraps)

 -  Folders (including the weird folders that are inside electronic cameras), even the Fonts folder and others that you may not think of  

-  Drives (hard disks, floppies, CDs, Jaz drives, the works)  

-  Other computers on your network, and drives and folders on those computers  

-  Printers (including printers on other computers on your network), scanners, cameras, and other pieces of hardware  

-  Dial-up network connections Shortcuts can do many amazing things. For example, you can set up a shortcut to a specific network printer on your desktop. Then, if you want to print a file on that printer, just drag the file onto the shortcut. Windows XP takes care of all the details. There are many different ways to create shortcuts. Say you use the Windows calculator all the time, and you want to put a shortcut to the Windows calculator on your desktop. Here’s an easy way to do it:

1. Right-click any blank spot on the desktop.

2. Choose New -> Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard appears.

3. Click Browse.

4. In the Browse for Folder dialog box, click My Computer, click the C: drive, click Windows, and then click System32. Scroll way down to calc.exe.

5. Click calc.exe and click OK.

6. Click Next; type a good, descriptive name like Calculator; and click Finish.

Any time you double-click the Windows Calculator shortcut on your desktop, the Calculator comes to life. You can use a similar procedure for setting up shortcuts to any file, folder, program, or document on your computer or any networked computer. Often, the hardest part about setting up a shortcut is finding the program that you want the shortcut to refer to. In the preceding example, you saw how the Windows Calculator is located in the system32 folder, which in turn sits inside the Windows folder (techie shorthand is C:\Windows\system32). Many other Windows programs are in the system32 folder. If you’re looking for the Microsoft Office XP programs, they’re probably in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10, while Office 2000 programs are most likely in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office. The Fonts folder sits in C:\Windows. In general, if you’re looking for programs, your best bet is to look in the Program Files folder first and then in the Windows folder.

You have many other ways to skin the shortcat . . . uh, skin the shortcut cat. When you’re working in Windows Explorer, you can right-click many types of files and folders, drag them to new locations other folders, the desktop, even the Start menu or the Quick Launch Toolbar release the mouse button, and choose Create Shortcuts Here.