Pin any folder or control panel on the taskbar in Windows 7

In earlier posts, we have discussed how you can pin any drive on the taskbar, pin any folder in Windows 7 start menu. We will now discuss how to pin any folder or even the control panel on Windows 7 taskbar.

Normally, we can not pin a folder directly on the taskbar. This is only possible for applications.

Here is a tip to pin directly to a personal folder to the taskbar.

In this example, the My Documents folder will be pinned to the Taskbar.

1. Right-click on the desktop, click New, then click Shortcut :

2. Enter the location of the item

explore shell: My Documents

3. Click next and rename the shortcut to “My Documents” in the next window and click finish.

4. The new My Documents shortcut is created on the desktop:

5. To customize its icon, right click, select Properties, then Change Icon . The icons in the folder C: > Windows > explorer.exe will be displayed. Browse to C: > Windows > System32 > imageres.dll to get more icons:

Select the one that matches with My Documents folder icon. Click OK and Again Apply and and OK in the properties Window.

6. Right click on the shortcut icon you have created and select pin to taskbar. It will appear in the taskbar:

7. Now delete the shortcut on desktop. We do not need it more.

One can of course adapt the procedure for individual files.
Only the location of the item that changes, then customize the name and icon of the shortcut.

Music -> explorer shell: My Music

Images -> explorer shell: My Pictures

Videos -> explorer shell: My Video

Downloads -> explorer shell: Downloads

Games -> explorer shell: Games

Favorites -> explorer shell: Favorites

For public folders:

Documents -> explorer shell: Common Documents

Music -> explorer shell: CommonMusic

Images -> explorer shell: CommonPictures

Videos -> explorer shell: CommonVideo

Downloads -> explorer shell: CommonDownloads

For the system folders:

Personal folder UserName -> explorer shell: Profile

Computer -> explorer shell: MyComputerFolder

Network -> explorer shell: NetworkPlacesFolder

Control Panel-> explorer shell: ControlPanelFolder

For a personal folder created and stored in user’s profile UserName :

My own example file created and saved to C: > Users > Abhishek > Custom name

C: > Windows  explorer.exe “C: > Users > Abhishek > Custom”

Replace ” > ” with backslash in above examples.

Here is the example of Control Panel which has been pinned to Windows 7 Taskbar: