Shortcut To A Shortcut

[Ron Maide]

Hi people,
unbeknownst to yourselves, some of you have already been of great help to me, but now I've created for myself a specific little problem.
I'll do my best to keep this brief, but I tend to ramble to be as clear as possible, often just achieving the opposite.

I've finally sort of come to terms with the Win7 way of working, adapting my ways of WinXP organisation into the new and supposedly better ways of 7. I'm very anal about my organisations, which causes the problems I need other people to solve for me. First a quick history.

The start menu in my XP did the following:
START > Games > shortcuts to all my games
or START > Audio > shortcuts to all my audiosoftware
You might imagine what I did for the videotools...

In Win7 I've accepted pinning the most used icons to the start menu, in all honesty I don't use enough to warrant several distinct folders, but for reasons I won't bother you with I want access to shortcuts to all installed games through the start menu.
I know I can just search the menu, a nice feature, I can admit finally, but I will at one point have so many unfinished games installed I might forget one or two. I've solved this by putting a folder containing the shortcuts in my Gamefolder and I wish to put that Shortcutfolder into the start menu. So far, so good.
Now, for no other reason than esthetics I want the Shortcutfolder I've put in the start menu to have a different name than it's parent in my Gamefolder.

The problem seems clear to me, but it's my problem, after all. If you understand what I'm trying to do and have an idea on how to fix it, I'd love to hear it. Thanks for the help and if you couldn't help, thanks for reading all of this.

 

[Kirsch]

So you have a shortcut to your gamefolder that has all of your shortcuts to your video games, and you'd like to rename the shortcut? Can you right click the shortcut in the start menu and click "rename"?

 

[Brink]

Hello Ron,

In addition to the above post:

Not sure if this may help or not, but it may be an idea to consider.

Normally when you install games, they will be automatically added to the Games folder. You could use the Customize Start Menu settings to add the Games button on the Start Menu for easy access to these game shortcuts. You can also add games to this as well.




Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Ron Maide]

Thanks for the help so far, however, renaming the link in the start menu also renames the folder.
If I make a shortcut to the folder by right-clicking and selcting "create shortcut", I can put that shortcut in the start menu, but I'll have two shortcuts: The one I want, in the start menu and the one it refers to, which in turn refers to the folder. When I remove the second unwanted shortcut, the shortcut in start menu can't find it's way to the folder and tells me the specified location doesn't exist anymore (something to that extent anyway).
So I dragged the original folder into the start menu and renaming that link in the start menu results in renaming the folder.

At the moment I'm just working the double-shortcut method and I dumped the second shortcut in with all the game shortcuts. Oddly enough Windows is perfectly able to establish if the file was renamed or moved and follows it's path without issues.

My orginal post may have suggested a bit that I'm a total idiot, but I'm actually jus a little bit of an idiot. I used to know my way around Windows and I used to be able to create an acceptable workaround for every problem I made, but this whole Win7 thing has got me almost back to square one. So, yeah, I tried right-click rename.

@ Shawn: Mr. Brink, I've benefited off alot of your How-To's already, so thanks for those. I'll go and have look to see if I can beat and bend the Games button into the shape I'd like it.
You'd figure I'd be able to solve something as simple as this myself and because it's so simple I'm thinking it's just not possible. Anyway, thanks.

 

[dood]

Your answer is classic shell
Welcome to Classic Shell

I know where you are coming from.. I 'build my own' menus as well..
With the 'old menu' interface, using classic shell, its just as easy as it was before.. "Open All Users", nav to a given directory..drop in your .lnks.

Good luck!

 

[whs]

I would solve this problem with toolbars rather than thru the start menu. Have a look at my little video tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/72092-toolbars-how-use-windows-7-vista.html

 

[Ron Maide]

The Games button didn't do it for me, but thanks.

@ dood: I'll have a look at Classic Shell, but I must admit that I do feel I need to move on and why not sooner than later. The shortcut-to-shortcut workaround is fine, so far.
Cool avatar, by the way.

@ whs: That's almost exactly what I want. It's just on the worst spot of the taskbar, for me. Your video-tutorial has me interested in some more experimenting with the sidebar and stuff though.
Thanks for the help people, so far I'm satisfied with what I got, actually.

 

[alphanumeric]

If you are interested in editing the start menu the old fashioned way, set explorer to display hidden and system files and go to Program Data > Microsoft > Windows > Start Menu > Programs. I've renamed and regrouped folders, and renamed shortcuts without breaking anything. I just find it faster than trying to do it in the actual start menu. I like to group all my Microsoft programs in one folder and shorten the names. As an example I change Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 to just Outlook. Its a lot easier to just click the icon text and rename it than to navigate though the start menu for each one and have to right click and select rename. I also delete all the un-install shortcuts and readme's just to clean things up.

 

[whs]

The Games button didn't do it for me, but thanks.

@ dood: I'll have a look at Classic Shell, but I must admit that I do feel I need to move on and why not sooner than later. The shortcut-to-shortcut workaround is fine, so far.
Cool avatar, by the way.

@ whs: That's almost exactly what I want. It's just on the worst spot of the taskbar, for me. Your video-tutorial has me interested in some more experimenting with the sidebar and stuff though.
Thanks for the help people, so far I'm satisfied with what I got, actually.

If you have a 32bit system, you could use the AppLauncher in the Vista style sidebar (which can be put in). For 64bit, that AppLauncher does not work though. If you need more assistance. let me know.

 

[Ron Maide]

Excellent! I was looking for the start menu folder. Thanks for that tip.

So far I've got alot of good info, thanks!