Solved Find the actual program path of a shortcut in Win 7 Pro

[innkeeper9]

Hello,

I am on Win 7 pro, and it is a totally new system for me [and I'm old] and it does nothing like XP or previous OS. Anyway, you used to be able to right click a shortcut icon and see the path to the actual program, now the only path the icon shows is the path to the shortcut, duh. I know where the shortcut is I want to find the path to the program, when you look at the Target it only has the name of the program. Can anyone tell me how to do that? It is important since this is my email program, it is part of a Microsoft office thing and I cannot find it so if I ever lose the shortcut I will never be able to again find the email program. I have tried doing a search for Outlook 2007, it finds it but when I do open containing folder it just gives me the search path saying that I am in user/whatever/ so on search. There must be some way to find the path to the programs to which shortcuts are linked. This is crazy. Thanks for any help.

Ruth

 

[carwiz]

Welcome to the forum.

Sounds like you're looking at the "General" tab under the shortcut properties. If you click on the Shortcut tab, the program location is displayed next to Start In.

 

[UsernameIssues]

....It is important since this is my email program, it is part of a Microsoft office thing......

The Office shortcuts are weird:



edit: I don't have an easy solution for innkeeper9
I'm just attempting to help carwiz help innkeeper9.

One (not so easy way) would be to use:
Task Manager
Processes tab
From the Menu Bar, select View > Select Columns...
Scroll down and put a check by Image Path Name
Click on OK.
Start the application of interest.
Then find that application within Task Manager.
The path to that application should now show in one of the columns on Task Manager's Processes tab.

 

[innkeeper9]

Thanks to both of you. Car, that is what I would expect, however, UNI's image is what I get and I do not know how to find the program. I went to All Programs and found Microsoft Office folder clicked it and it gave a list of a bunch of things, i.e. Microsoft Enterprise and so on, so I tried making a shortcut and seeing if it would give me a path, but all it does is make a shortcut to the start menu. I will keep trying and in the meantime keep using XP since I can actually use this OS

 

[DavidE]

Did you try the suggestion for Task Manager by UsernameIssues ?

Here is what it shows for me with Office 2010 - Outlook, Word, and Excel open ...

 

[innkeeper9]

Oh my, well, that's embarrasing [I said I was old ] I seemed to have gone right past that and it is the one thing I do know how to use. Though I set it for those columns I get abbreviations, i.e. under Image Path Name I get C:\Program Files... There must be someplace to set the system to show me the full paths, but I don't know where to find that.

My apologies to UNI for not reading the post more carefully!

Ruth

 

[innkeeper9]

Wow, I found it, though I would still like to know about the full paths. If you highlight the program under the Processes tab and then right click someplace in the task manager you get an option to open the folder for the program and so I now have the path listed, though I'd prefer to have it actually listed fully in the task manager since I will probably need this again!

Thanks so much to every one of you. You are terrific!

 

[UsernameIssues]

Oh my, well, that's embarrasing [I said I was old ] I seemed to have gone right past that and it is the one thing I do know how to use. Though I set it for those columns I get abbreviations, i.e. under Image Path Name I get C:\Program Files... There must be someplace to set the system to show me the full paths, but I don't know where to find that.

My apologies to UNI for not reading the post more carefully!

Ruth

No apologies needed. Notice the word edit in my post. That means that I added stuff after I made the original post. It is possible that you loaded the webpage/thread and my edits were not there yet. Or maybe you did not scroll down far enough - but pick the first story about the info not being there yet and stick to it



To see the entire path, you will need to adjust the column's width. Double click on the column divider on the right side of the column of interest to auto-size the column's width. (Or Click/Hold/Drag/Release).






As far as getting old, then you will fit right in here. Take a look at this thread: http://www.sevenforums.com/chillout-room/139563-age-category-do-you-fall.html where 747 forum members told the truth* about their age.

*maybe

 

[innkeeper9]

Thank you so much, that worked a treat. I found the path, made a new shortcut and pasted the path in then tested it and it works, so now I know where the program is and I have a real world hard copy of the path.

As to getting old: well, I remember when seeing PC probably meant someone made a typo for District of Columbia, when personal computers were actually pretty 'big', when using one meant you had to at least know the basic dos commands, when a utility called Xtree had pc users ecstatic, and when floppy disks were actually 'floppy'

You guys are great, thanks so much to all for the help.

Ruth