Windows 10 User Tips -- Organizing Start Menu, Task Bar, & Explorer

Hi everybody, my name is Randy Dean, popularly known as the Email Sanity Expert and author of the book Taming the Email Beast. And like many of you, I've now been using Windows 10 for a little over a year, and I've picked up a few tips that I think may be helpful when it comes to utilizing your Windows 10 to maybe save you a little bit of time. So do this, let's pop out of here, and what I'd like to do is pop just down here to start with the Start screen. And I've found a couple interesting little things. You'll notice that you've you've got this column up here for Most Used. Well, one thing that's interesting is it'll often show you some of the programs that you've been using. So what you can do is you can right-click on any of these and come up to Pin to Start, and that will keep it as part of your Start menu so that you can see it right where you'd like to use it when it's a program that you like to use frequently. Additionally, one of the other things that you'll see under here is Suggested, and what's interesting is I'm not using that program right there, so I can come down here to Don't Show This Suggestion, and it will take that item off of the list. Like you can see, that's now no longer showing. So you can basically clean this up and get it sort of looking the way that you want it to look here. Now, one of the other things that I found which is sort of interesting with Most Used is that, as you can see down here, you've got your alphabetical list of all of the programs that are running. If you come up to the top and click on Most Used, that brings up a full alphabet for you. And so, like, let's say I want to come down here and open up Microsoft Excel. I actually have to go under M for Microsoft instead of E for Excel because the way they have this in the Office 2013 program. I can come in here, go into Excel, and then launch Excel. Now what's interesting is it's going to open up Microsoft Excel like you would normally see, but when it does, notice that one of the things that's sort of nice is down here on the bottom it actually —opens up a little icon on the bottom. And now I can pin that to the taskbar, and now this is going to be permanent in this taskbar. Not only that, let's say I want to move it over by Word and also get Outlook so they're all next to each other, and PowerPoint so they're all next to each other. And maybe I'll move Firefox over so it's next to Chrome. So see, now I've got a good suite of my productivity tools all along here on the bottom. And now watch, even if I close Excel I still have Excel pinned to the bottom so that I can quickly and easily find it. So you can move stuff around, you can get the programs that you're using most frequently so that they're on the bottom bar and easy access whenever you need them. Now, sort of related to this, inside the File Cabinet— let's open up the File Cabinet. Notice that you've also got this Quick Access Bar up here at the top. This is something that's sort of new inside the Windows 10 Windows Explorer File Cabinet, but you'll see that what it's doing is it's actually giving me some suggestions of folders and other locations that it notices I'm using fairly frequently. Well, let's say I want to make my Smartphone Success folder, which is one of the programs that I lead regularly— let's say I wanted to make that to where I can always find it in this list. I can right-click on this and once again notice that I can pin it to Quick Access, or I could even pin it to the Start menu. I'll just pin it to Quick Access right here, and you'll see it's added to some of the other folders that I'm using quite frequently. Now let's say it at some point I don't want to have that in there, I can unpin it from Quick Access and it leaves the folder list. But if I start using that folder again, it'll probably show up again. So, so that's a pretty handy little thing. Now notice this also inside of here, I am in my RD Consulting folder, one of the folders that's right here, and I wanted to show you a little something here. I have a folder inside here that I access all the time. It's actually pinned in my Start menu, Presentations. But I have it inside of here also. And notice what I can do. I can right-click on this and then create a shortcut. And here's the beauty of this. This is a trick that I used to use in the older versions of Windows. I can create the shortcut for this, and once I create a shortcut, it's going to actually create a shortcut a little bit further down in the list. So we'll pop down here and see— there it is. See, I've got Presentation Shortcuts inside of here. I can pick one of these up and move them out of here onto my desktop. Now I want to show you a little flash tip that's pretty cool. On most PCs, there is a keyboard— or a key on the keyboard that looks like the Windows icon. It looks like a little window, and if you use Window key and the letter D at the same time, it automatically flashes you to your primary screen. And notice that I've got one of my shortcuts folders and my proposals folder. These are two folders that I use quite frequently, so I've got these right on my front page. But what's really fascinating is I did not close any of my programs. You'll see I can go right back into my screen. I can go back into PowerPoint. I can go back into Microsoft Outlook and have my information there ready to roll so that I can make this work. So one of the things that I recommend that you do is use the Windows+D key so that you can flash the desktop and move some of your shortcut folders out to that desktop if you'd like to save some time. Now, we're sort of related to that. Watch what happens if I close, uh, Windows Explorer here. I'm going to close it. So now I'm back in now to my inbox here, and so I can pop into some of these messages and everything. And let's say I will need to open up that Windows Explorer. I can use that same Windows key and the letter E, and look what this does. This opens up Windows Explorer again. So the first one was Windows+D, which flashes you Windows+D. The flashes you to the home screen. Windows+E takes you right back to Microsoft Windows Explorer where you can then jump in and find your folders that you now have pinned as well as create shortcuts so that you can put them on your desktop. Hope that all makes sense. All of these are just ways for you to find your folders, get to your folders, get to your programs, get to your tools a little bit more quickly and easily utilizing some of these tools that are inside of Windows 10. The most used bar, the bottom taskbar, and of course some of the tools in Windows Explorer and also on your desktop. All right, so let's finish this thing up. Once again, my name is Randy Dean. If you'd like to find out a little bit more about some of the kinds of programs that I lead, go out and check out my website randaldean.com. And if you enjoy these videos, subscribe to me on this YouTube channel. Thanks.