Shortcuts To Folders / Files In Start Menu Search Box
Sep 15, 2015
When I Installed Win 10, if I wanted to quickly access one of those 6 Win 10 PC 'Folders' (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos), I would just had to type in the folder in the start menu search box, press Enter and it would access the folder.As soon as I changed the folders' original location, this 'typing shortcut' did not work anymore.is it even possible to make typing shortcuts to folders or files in the search box? (i.e typing "x" for a specific folder named "y")
I read many people complain about the Start Menu on Windows 10, specifically about not being able to modify it like they could in Windows 7.
You actually can modify it, pretty easily. Simply open This PC, then click in the address bar and type "start menu". You can then go into Programs and create new folders, shortcuts, etc. And any shortcuts you create can be also pinned as a tile from the All Apps section. And you can have Cortana launch them too.
I recently performed a clean upgrade from a clean 8.1 Install of Windows Pro. It's connected to a domain and uses Folder Redirection. The search function finds NO programs or start menu shortcuts, desktop etc. When I click the start and start typing, a few things are found, and at the top of the window it says "these results may be incomplete".
I have rebuilt the search, stopped the services, renamed the data folder, and tried a new user profile, and it does the same thing.
I got Windows 10 home a few months now. No problems whatsoever with the installation or setup/usage and it'd fast and bug free. My problem happened just last week...
I used to press the WIN key & S to search for files. Or i can press the START button and just start typing. It will search for my files & search the internet (cortana search). Now nothing happens when i search.
When i press WIN+S, and type something, it just sit's there doing nothing, but it seems like Cortana is thinking or about to give out information, but nothing happens at all. Same as on the start menu. I type out something and no information is given, it wont search for any of my files or nothing.
I am at a lost. In the past, it worked perfectly, like Windows 8.1. Press START, & type.
Many times when I search from the Start Menu, results come up for files that have been deleted or moved but the old path is listed in the results (so that clicking it throws me a "File cannot be found" type error).
I first noticed this when I moved a folder of PDF manuals to a new location. The titles of these files will come up when searching from the Start Menu but the paths are linked to the original locations and so Windows can't "find" the file when I click on it in the search results.
I did a CCleaner sweep of my system and even tried rebuilding the search index but cannot correct this nonsense. What's going on?
when i search from the start menu, all i want to find is applications (desktop apps, metro apps, shortcus to apps in the all-applications menu) and settings, not files and folders. (i already disabled the web search there).
i still want to be able to search files when searching from antoher places, just not when searching from the start menu, so disabling the index is not an option for me.
UPDATE: See Edwin's method in Post #4 for IE it is much easier than mine. But for other browsers use this method.
Since you cannot just drag and drop a shortcut to a web site into the app menu the way I do it is to create a short cut on my desktop then copy it into the start menu:
%AppData%MicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms
You'll need admin privileges to do this. Then open the start menu and put the mouse pointer on it, right click and select pin to start. If you want to do this for all users use this path:
%ProgramData%MicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms
You can create a folder just for there shortcuts or just let them stand on their own. Be aware that if you ever delete the folder and or the shortcut then the pinned short(s) will cease to work.
What am I missing here? I can pin exe's with a right click but trying to do this with a desktop shortcut does nothing. If it is not allowed, why does the context menu have 'Pin to start' in it?
I finally upgraded from Win7 to Win10. The start links (Documents to Videos) all come up as "Missing Shortcut".
After about a minute or so, it changes to the "Problem with Shortcut"
For Videos, I clicked the "Delete it" option and it completely removed it.
I have tied many combinations of turning on/off the links in settings and restarting to no avail. Also, the folder in app data it refers to does not exist under any profile.
I'd rather not fill up the Tiles area with these links when they could be there vice blank space.
Whenever I try to move, delete or rename a shortcut in ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms or its subfolders, appears this window (but the shortcut is moved, deleted or renamed without problems):
Really it is not a problem, but it seems that something is wrong...
Is it possible to have a button on the start menu that will open Wird and load a Word Document rather then having to click on the "Word" Icon and then open up a particular document? When I tried to drag a shortcut to the Word document to the start menu to pin it there, I get a red X icon.
I did an upgrade from win 7 to 10. Some glitches, but nothing I can handle. But i didn't like when u pin down a short cut on the start menu, it went to right. I want some program to pin down on the leftside, like win7. Is it possible to do that on win10?
Back in 7, my start menu had stuff pinned to it. I could click, say, Visual Studio and a submenu would slide out with recently opened projects on it so I could not only open it, but open a specific project.
I pinned VS to my Start Menu, but it doesn't have that functionality. I thought OK, well, maybe if it's on the left side of the start menu where the recently used stuff was. I can't figure out though how to get a shortcut over there (I believe that area is called "quick links"). I don't even have "recently used" anymore. I saw one can add folders from a list, but I don't need that. Right clicking the pinned VS in the "tiles" area doesn't give me that program specific context so that's not really useful.
On my desktop computer I have a folder and some files which have a common part of a name on both such as the name of the folder could be Folder and the files could be called Folder/file1, Folder/file2 etc. Doing a search in documents or even drilling down closer(these folders and files are about 5 levels down, if I used the name Folder, I don't find the folder or the files which had Folder as part of their name.
I cleared the search file and rebuilt the index and it still couldn't find the files.
I have a laptop which contains the same files as my desktop. I opened explorer and keyed in "Folder" and they popped right up. The only difference in the machines is that the desktop has an upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and the laptop is a Windows 10 from scratch. I have checked the search ribbon on explorer and all options and other items are identical between the two machines.
When I rebuilt the search file, I even added the drive that actually contained the Documents folder which the system is smart enough to know that the drive contained the documents folder so it removed the documents folder from the list when it added the drive. No change.
Interesting thing happened though. With all my frustrations, I restored to a C drive image from a week before to see what would happen. and immediately after the restore completed, I tried the search and it worked. So then I tried it again and it didn't work. Even drilling down the folder tree to the specific folder which contained the files so I'm looking at them while I'm keying in the search argument and it still can't find them.
Win 10 Enterprise. Worked fine for a couple of days, but now I cannot seem to bring up the start menu and start typing anything. It will not search. I also tried in the search box or spyglass... I just click on it and nothing happens. It is a major inconvenience. I don't want to do a restore and keep my files, because there is a HUGE list of applications I will then need to restore. I also tried to click on Cortana, but clicking the app does nothing, doesn't even bring it up.
I tried re-indexing search items, I tried the search troubleshooter. I have rebooted, I have installed all updates. Someone on another forum said kill the Cortana task... well there isn't one running.
Folders in question --C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms --C:UsersRitaAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms
Right so, I have been trying to create application shortcuts in the "all apps" of the start menu. I've had success with some shortcuts. Here is a screenshot, with an example of what I am talking.The following shortcuts are behaving as I want them to,The following shortcut is not behaving as I want it to.. it keeps pinning to start despite all my attempts to unpin it and recopy to the folder,they are all shortcuts to executable files. Why is windows handling some of them differently?
On Windows 7 start menu you could have a folder such as EA Games and then sub folders within. For example a folder for tiger woods golf, a folder for say Fifa and so on. It seems on Windows 10 you can only have one folder level. I have tried creating sub folders but all the shortcuts within the sub folders all appear under the one top/master folder when actually viewing the start menu. Am I correct in this observation/restriction?
I'm running the RTM on a netbook and have noticed that, unlike in Windows 7/8/8.1, I'm no longer able to hit Start and type in an executable. I have a bunch of portable apps that I typically type in and pull up. Now, the Start menu search pulls up ever OTHER file except the executable. It's very annoying and don't see why this shouldn't work.
What's worse, is if I pin the app to the start menu, it doesn't search it then. Say, I pin "puttyportable.exe" as a shortcut (and rename it to just PuTTY) to the start menu. Typing in "putty" gives me nothing - just the same associated files that were in the puttyportable folder (ini files, etc).
I installed Windows 10 very recently and I like it, but I have a VERY BIG show-stopper: when I try to do search in the start menu, it's terrible; it cannot even find an application that I have manually pinned to start. I didn't have any such problem with Windows 8.1. I have also installed some other desktop applications, for example GitHub for Windows, but when I start to to type "Git...", it only finds "GitHub" and it cannot find "Git Shell" and I have to go to all programs, find "G", then expand the folder for this application and run that application.
Search in Windows new start menu is annoying, each time web search using bing results are also shown, which is really unwanted. Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Search.We can enable the following 3 options to disable web search:
Do not allow web search. Don't search the web or display web results in Search. Don't search the web or display web results in Search over.
However, as usual I'm looking for a way to do this via registry.
