Windows 8 Bible

Creating and Deleting Shortcuts

Shortcuts provide an easy way to get to a file or folder without having to navigate through a bunch of folders. For example, let’s say you have an external disk drive X. On that drive you have a folder named My Big Project inside another folder named Xternal Docs. To view the contents of your My Big Project folder, you have to open your Computer folder, open the icon for drive X, open the Xternal Docs folder, and then open the My Big Project folder. Doing that repeatedly gets tiresome.

If you create a shortcut to My Big Project, you won’t have to go through all those steps. You just have to open the My Big Project shortcut icon. That shortcut icon can be anywhere you like — on the desktop, in your Documents folder, in the Favorites pane — or any combination thereof.

You can create a desktop shortcut to virtually any program, folder or file just by right-clicking that item’s icon and choosing Send To Desktop (create shortcut). You can also use any of the following methods to create a shortcut to a file or folder:

• Hold down the Alt key as you drag an icon to the folder in which you want to place the shortcut.
• Drag, using the right mouse button, the selected icon(s) to where you want to put the shortcuts. After you release the right mouse button, click Create Shortcuts Here.
• Copy the selected icon(s) to the Clipboard (press Ctrl+C or right-click and ...