Does not work (Win 7) I add the word explorer and hit next. The shortcut is changed to

C:\explorer”C:\Users\Owner —–

In other words the program automatically adds a C:\ before the word explorer. No way to remove it.

Any suggestions

Thanks for this. It works perfect in Windows 10. I had been using the toolbars quicklaunch (for program shortcuts) and a Games folder (for game shortcuts) I created. Problem is Windows 10 has this bad habit of when opening either Quicklaunch or the Games Toolbar, it took like a minute to open every time I started Windows up the next day. It was a royal pain in my neck and made those toolbars rather worthless (having to wait for all the shortcuts to load before I could do anything). I had searched and searched for a fix for this and never found one. I was resigned to the fact that Microsoft just had this behavior with toolbars and it’s just the way it was. Thanks Bill. This method fixed that. I got rid of those two toolbars and created two folders, one for program shortcuts and one for game shortcuts and then copied all the shortcuts over to them. I then did this method and then pinned this both to taskbar separate of File Explorer . Now I have instant access to all the same shortcuts as before but now don’t have to wait for them to load before use anymore. Took me ages to finally get the solution to this situation that was driving me nuts. Now I’m good.

It worked great — just as you described. Thanks so much — I’ve been fighting this for several years & finally looked your article up.

As others have mentioned I also do not have the “Pin to Taskbar” available as an option when right clicking the shortcut on the desktop. I have “Pin to Start’ but no “Pin to Taskbar” or “”quick Launch’ either.

This is a must have tip – really helps for fast drill down to any folder location without the hassle of a Toolbar. MS should just allow this option for any folder.

Worked like a charm!!! I really needed this. You are a good technical writer.

i can’t get past the “click or tap Browse” part of your instructions. Where do i find the Browse command?

Thank You!!!

Does not work for me. In Windows 8.1, after creating the shortcut on the desktop, there is no option in my context menu for the shortcut to pin it to the taskbar. Pin to Start, yes. If I have no other folder on the taskbar and I open the folder, then I can pin it using the icon which now appears on the taskbar. However, when I close the folder, the pinned icon simply becomes the generic This PC ‘folder’. Any way around this? I want to pin a _particular_ folder, and I don’t want it to merge.

Great help! Thank you very much.

awesome! managed to pin music folder to my taskbar 18 months after purchasing my laptop, haha. thanks for the clear instructions.

Can anyone tell me how to pin folders to the taskbar folder in Windows 2010? I used to have no trouble with Windows 2007. Now I can’t figure it out! Please reply to this post as I entered the wrong email in the earlier post – thank you!

…Or you can just drag the folder immediately to the taskbar and it will be pinned under the usual forlder icon on the bottom left which you access by right-clicking it.

Me too! 🙂

Thanks! I have been trying to do this for ages!!! Worked perfectly!

MUCH easier method and with more flexibility, pin ‘Windows Explorer’ to the task bar. Yes, when opened, this will open your Libraries, but keep reading. Find the folder you want easy access to, and drag it onto the new Windows Explorer icon on the task bar. When you right click it on the task bar, a list of all the folders you have pinned to it will appear, as well as frequently used ones.

You’ll need two clicks rather than just one, but it’s much easier to set up and you can attach many folders to it instead of just one.

I have done it that way too!

It was pain in the *** because i have tried creating a shortcut of “Favorites” (in the sidebar/i find this folder so useful!) using a shortcut + shell command and i have not found the shell command for this Favorites… Grrr

if anyone has it?

Thanks man, I researched this for about an hour or so and everybody had me trying to edit registry keys and a bunch of other non-sense. Hands down this was the best tutorial that I have seen on this subject. Thanks for taking the time to put it together!!

A New Toolbar is faster:
I find it faster to create and use by having a new taskbar with a shortcut on my taskbar.
Create a folder with shortcuts to favourite programs, files, other folders etc.
On the taskbar, right-click> Toolbars>New Toolbar>browse to the folder and wolla! (its done!)

Next to the name of the new toolbar (on the taskbar), appears /”>>” which upon clicking on it, shows all the content of the folder in a compact list without opening the folder.

Its much faster to setup and use than the procedure here (although I would still prefer to improve this by showing larger icons and by having more to click on than only the >> which is rarther small, so I am still looking…)

You can just drag the folder (to which you are creating a shortcut) onto the start button and drop it. A shortcut will automatically be created and pinned to the start menu.

Nice..Work for my Windows 7..Thanks.