Quick Tip # 2 - Organizing your Start Menu in Windows XP

When you display the All Programs menu do you get a hodgepodge of program names rambling over two or more columns? Does it take you more than a couple of seconds to find the program that you are looking for amid a morass of text?

Sound familiar? Well here is a quick and easy way to reduce your menu to one short, easily navigable column.

Take a look at the current menu and quickly jot down a list of categories that your programs fit into, e.g. Games, Financial Tools, Photo Editors, Office Tools, etc. You will add these categories to your menu in the form of folders. Once the folders have been added you can simply drag and drop each program into it's appropriate folder.

Adding new folders cannot be done from the All Programs menu. For this we have to navigate the C drive. The following steps will walk you through the process.

1. Right click on the Start button and then select the Explore option.
2. Navigate to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs
   
3. Click on the File option on the toolbar at the top of the page to display the file menu.
   
4. Click on the New option then click on the Folder option when the sub-menu displays. The menus will close and a new folder icon named New Folder will appear in the Programs folder.
5. Right click on the New Folder icon and select the Rename option from the folder menu.
   
6. Type over the current folder name and replace it with one of your program categories, e.g. Office Tools.

Now that you have added your folder you can click on the Start button and then All Programs. When your program menu displays you can simply click once on each program name and then move it over the appropriate folder. The program will be added to the new folder and will disappear from the current menu.