Comments on: How to Pin File or Folder to Start Menu in Windows 11/10

By: Jeffrey Levine

Jeffrey Levine — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 21:45:00 +0000

Yes…. Forget you ever read this page. Don’t waste any more time on it. I’m about to go back and remove the useless line of code from my Registry.

Just create a Shortcut to the file you want to appear in your Start Menu, and add it to:
C:Users[username]AppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart Menu. (Others have suggested this as well. Listen to their advice.) From there, you can “Pin to Start”, if you want it to appear as a tile. Gee, Thanks, Microsoft, for making your nomenclature so damned confusing.

A much better solution for me was to add a “Toolbar” to the Windows Taskbar at the bottom that points to the Start Menu folder containing my icons, which for me is: C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart Menu

Just right-click on the Task Bar and add a Toolbar that points to this folder.
This allows me to see the ENTIRE FOLDER STRUCTURE of my Start Menu, in expanding, cascading form…. like I used to be able to do in XP and Windows 7, before Microsoft decided they needed to “stupify” the rest of Windows to go along with the stupification of the Office suite. This is no longer possible in the Windows 10 Start Menu. This now takes up extra space on my Task Bar, but it’s worth it.

By: gadlen

gadlen — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:54:00 +0000

This hack works but only for shortcuts! Make a shortcut of the file you want to Pin and you can pin the shortcut. Thanks

By: Chris Lovescoke

Chris Lovescoke — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 18:35:00 +0000

Doesn’t work for an Excel file. Why does MS make this so hard? I’ve spent an hour on it. I already posted Excel files to “Life at a Glance” in the past but no idea how I did it. This is absurdly ridiculous. Should be drag and drop. Let the bleeping user control his PC, please, MS.

By: Oscar

Oscar — Sat, 20 May 2017 11:31:00 +0000

I did not bother with the Registry edit, and did instead this one:

“If you do not want to touch the Windows Registry, there is a workaround to get this done.

Place a shortcut in the following ‘Hidden’ folder:

C:UsersusernameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms
Now open Start Menu > All apps and locate the shortcut you placed. Right-click on it and select Pin to Start.”

Works well.

By: Go Kevin

Go Kevin — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 23:45:00 +0000

is this helpful? (win 10 build 14393,693)

first find file click and send to desktop create short cut

second open “this pc”

click, view tab then options
a new window appears

click, the view tab in this new window
click, show hidden files,folders and drives
click, OK
the window will close.

now open C: uses/yourself/appdata/roaming/microsoft/windows
and finally start menu

in here cut and paste any short cut

or if you want open programs, cut and paste any short cut

it doesn’t appear to make any difference which you choose.

this has worked for M$ docs plus pdfs and standard folders
I tend to rename mine with a number first, they then appear at the top of the program list