What Is This All About?
This little trick will let you put a little breathing room between the icons in the All Programs folder in your Windows Start Menu. It allows you to group similar icons together by spacing them apart from other icons.
Screencast
You guys seem to enjoy these so I created another screencast! View the Windows Tip: Put Some Space In Your Start Menu Screencast.
Note: This won’t work correctly if you have done my Registry Hack: Automatically Sort The Programs Menu Alphabetically, the blank shortcuts would be sorted to the top of the group!
How To
- Right click the desktop and make a new shortcut.
- In the “Type the location of the item:” text box, select any target for this shortcut – it can be anything:
C:\ - In the “Type a name for this shortcut” text box, press the spacebar once, the only character you want in there is a single space!
- Right-click the new shortcut and click Properties.
- Delete the text in the Target field.
- Click Change Icon button and select a blank icon. The blue box below is my selected icon.
- Click the “OK” button in both dialog boxes. Your new shortcut should only have the Shortcut Arrow – no name or icon:
- Now, Click and drag this new shortcut onto the Start button, then into the All Programs menu and then to the desired location! You can copy this same shortcut as many times as you want.
That’s pretty cool. I never realised you could do that.
My start menu is an absolute mess at the moment. I really wish Microsoft had a better way of organising it.
Well, I have a great tip coming up for you Dan1el! I’ll show you how to tame your Start menu! Look for it later in the week, or maybe early next week!
Sounds good Saman. I’ll be on the look out.
actually tried this out as my start menu is beyond manageable. Help, thanks…