Customizing the Start Menu

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated August 25, 2014)

1

It's a good thing that Windows allows you to customize the Start menu. Since most everything you do in Windows is funneled through the Start menu in one way or another, customizing it can help you match the menu to the way you want to work.

Customizing the Start menu is done by using (oddly enough) the Customize Start Menu dialog box. Here's how you get to it:

  1. Right-click on the Start menu icon and choose Properties from the resulting Context menu. Windows displays the Start Menu tab of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.
  2. Click Customize. Windows displays the Customize Start Menu dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

    3. Figure 1. The Customize Start Menu dialog box.

The dialog box contains controls that allow you to specify essentially what appears in the Start menu. The majority of the controls consist of radio buttons and check boxes that control what options appear in the Start menu. You can also pick the number of recent programs to display and the number of items to display in the Jump Lists.

You can experiment with the choices in the Customize Start Menu dialog box and make the ones that best reflect how you want to use the Start menu. When you are done, click OK and your choices are immediately implemented.

 This tip (11992) applies to Windows 7.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He  is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is three minus 2?

2014-08-25 14:57:01

Scott Renz

I had always assumed that start menu was for controling what programs started when the computer started up. Upon seeing this tip, I am suspecting it is something else. What is it? What is its purpose? How does one use it and when?

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