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Add a Custom Toolbar to Windows 7, 8 or 10
Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10

One trick we’ve been using for a number of years is turning our most-often-used folders into toolbars that can be accessed quickly and easily from the system tray (Notification area). This is one of the most useful tips ever and we should have shared this with you long ago – but better late than never, right?

If you have a folder you need to access often you can make that folder a toolbar. Or let’s say your desktop is covered with shortcuts and you find yourself using just a few of them all of the time. You can create a folder on your desktop and drag the shortcuts to the programs you use most often into it and then make it a toolbar. You can see in the example below that I’ve created a folder called MAIN DESKTOP — which keeps my most often used programs at my fingertips.



Right click on your taskbar and choose Toolbars –> New toolbar —> and choose a folder you want to make a toolbar. In this case, I chose the folder called MAIN_DESKTOP and made it into a toolbar. I can easily access it by clicking on the double arrows next to its name. Now I can quickly access my favorite programs quickly. You might want to make your Pictures folder a toolbar, or you MP3 collection folder into a toolbar. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.





See? I can quickly and easily access my most often-used programs and links (and my most used folder) just by clicking my spankin’ new Popular Programs toolbar.

Pretty slick, eh? 
 

Easily Find What You’re Looking For On Our InfoAve Web Site
All Windows users

Did you know that over 2000 of our best tips and tricks can be found on our InfoAve Web site. And we’ve made it easy to find what you're looking for  by including a site search feature powered by Google. We're going to show you how to get the most out of our InfoAve Web site search feature and find exactly what you're looking for.

Here’s how to use our InfoAve Web site’s search feature:

1. At top of the page, notice on the right-hand side near the top, there is a search feature (highlighted in yellow below).



2. Here is a close up for you:

3. In the search box type what your looking for and click “Search InfoAve”. As an example, above, we’re going to search for how to “Fix Windows Update”. In less than a 1/2 of second we’ve found several Cloudeight articles on how to fix Windows Update as well as other articles related to Windows Update. The most relevant results are displayed first.

Read the rest of this tip on our InfoAve Web site - and try it out and see for yourself how easy it is to find what you're looking for.


Command Prompt vs. Windows PowerShell
Windows 10

Many of you use the command prompt to run commands such as IPCONFIG, CHKDSK /F, SFC /SCANNOW, RSTRUI, NETPLWIZ and all the other commands we’ve mentioned in our newsletters over the years. If you don’t know what any of those are, don’t worry about it – some people are more geeky than others.

If you use the Command Prompt frequently, you may be interested in using Windows PowerShell – but you need to be super geeky, I tells ya! Windows PowerShell is like the Command Prompt on steroids. You can run all the normal commands, such as those above in PowerShell (if you like), but PowerShell is a lot more powerful if you use it with CMDLETS (Pronounced Command Lets). We are not going to get into Cmdlets here, you’re already yawning. For the super geeky among you can see a list of PowerShell Cmdlets here. And if you want a detailed overview of Windows PowerShell, you’ll love this. Or if you love DIY you can get a list of Cmdlets by using Cmdlets – read this article.

Now we know most of you aren’t going to start using Cmdlets, but some of you will, and you will need to use PowerShell to run them because while you can run common Windows Command Prompt commands in Windows PowerShell, you can’t run Windows PowerShell Cmdlets in a Windows Command Prompt. Capiche?

OK. Moving on. Windows 10 has a right-click menu (when you right-click the Start button, you’ll see it). It’s sometimes called the power users’ menu. You can also access this menu by using the Windows Key + X combination.

By default, Windows 10’s right-click (power) menu looks like this. It has many items that you’ll use a lot like Power Options, Task Manger (although there are lots of other ways to open Task Manager), Control Panel, etc. You’ll note surrounded in a pink rectangle (EB insisted on pink) are “Command Prompt” and “Command Prompt (admin)”. See?

(Above) The default Windows 10 Right click or Power menu.

But let’s say you’re like EB and fancy yourself a power user and the power menu if for 98-pound weaklings and you want to kick it up a notch. Well, we are here to tell you, it’s easy to kick it up a notch by replacing the Command Prompt and Command Prompt (admin) with Windows PowerShell and Windows PowerShell (admin).

How do you do it? Right click on your taskbar and choose “Properties”. When “Properties” opens, click the “Navigation” tab at the top and tick the box next to “Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell in the menu when I right-click the lower-left corner or press Windows Key+X .

Find out more about the Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell by reading the rest of article here.

File Explorer Options in Windows 10
Windows 10

Windows 10 File Explorer allows you to change folder views quickly. The screen shots below highlight a few of the ways you can customize the way File Explorer works and looks.



Above: EB’s discovery. If you often switch back & forth between folder view and details/list view, you'll find these two little icons very handy. You can see us playing with it in the video below.



Above: In View options menu, the Navigation pane menu has several options which give you different views. If you just went to see your folders or list of folders, then uncheck Navigation pane. Want to see all you folders, guess which one you check?



And while you’re in the View menu, don’t forget you can turn on Item Checkboxes (very handy if you often select multiple files); you can also unhide hidden files and folders. See the screen shot above.

Now, a lot of people would prefer File Explorer show their drives first rather than Quick Access items.

If you’d rather see the old style Windows Explorer view (showing your hard drives ) all you have to do is open File Explorer (click the folder icon on your taskbar or press Windows Key + E). Now, click on View (on the toolbar) and then click on Options:



When you click Options – you’ll see “Folder Options” (You can also get to Folder Options from the Control Panel). At the top, under the General tab, you’ll see “Open File Explorer to:” You’ll have a choice of Quick Access or This PC. If you want to make File Explorer more like Windows Explorer in previous versions of Windows, choose “This PC”.



Below: This PC view – do you see the hard drives?



And here is Quick Access view (default in Windows 10).



File Explorer offers you a lot of options to configure it the way you want it. So take control of your File Explorer and make it yours! 


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