Tech Tips for Writers #95: Find the Programs You Use Quickly

Tech Tips for Writers is an (almost) weekly post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.

Q: I can’t always find the program I want. They seem to move around the desktop or get lost in the clutter. I don’t like putting them on the taskbar because that gets too busy. What’s a better way to organize programs I use all the time?

A: Pin them to the Start Menu.

• Find the program icon.
• Right click and you get a drop-down list of favorite choices.
• Select “Pin to Start Menu”. That puts it above the line (when you push the Start button). Programs below the line are the ones you’ve used recently.

Now, all you have to do is push the Start button (in the lower left corner) and you’ll see all your favorite programs. It also works for websites if you have one you go to all the time (like Ask a Tech Teacher!).

Apple aficionados: How do you do it on a Mac?

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.

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