Saturday 18 October 2008

All Programs column too wide? Shorten program names...

All Programs column too wide? Shorten program names...

Problem description

When you click Start, All Programs, the start menu appears in three columns. They appear too wide and program installations do not appear on the list. There seems to be a lot of empty space at the columns, i.e. the columns are too wide.

Why does it happen

The column width depends on the length of program names.

Remedies

Right click each program and select rename [F2] and shorten the name. I.e. a common culprit is MATZENTA - GOLDEN VERSION 2006 English-Greek-English Dictionary, change it to Magenta - Gold. You will have much narrower columns, thus room for more columns.

You can mass change program names easily by going to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs and changing long names on that list.

You can group similar programs in a folder, so as to have fewer individual programs listed. For ex: if you have 5 different dictionaries listed individually on programs menu you can make one folder called Dictionaries and put the shortcuts to each one in the new folder. You'll have one extra click to access them, but you'll have room for lots more programs on the All Programs menu.

Right click on the Start button, select Properties, Customize then Advanced. Scroll down the list and select Scroll programs. The programs will be in a single line. If you want to put them into alphabetical order, right click on one entry then select Sort by name.



Before rename - Wide


After rename - Narrow

Originally published at translatum: Your All Programs column too wide? Cannot see all your programs?

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