Classic Shell: Forum

Hi,

I've been using the "Classic with two columns" start menu style on Windows 8.1 for a long time now and very grateful for all the work that has gone into it.

One issue I've struggled with for a long time however and never been able to find a solution to is as follows:

I have a couple of folder links to a second hard drive in the top section of the left hand side column of the start menu. At the moment they have little arrows beside them which expand out to show the sub-folder tree when I click on the folder. To actually open the folder in Explorer, I need to double click on the link. I want to change these to be simple links that do not expand, such that I only need to click on them once for the folder to open in Explorer.

I can see that I can achieve this for folders in the right hand column by going to the "Customize Start Menu" tab in the settings menu and selecting "Don't expand" under the edit menu for the item in question. However I can not find any way of achieving the same thing for folders in the left had column.

Does anyone know of a way of doing this?

Thanks,

Ix

Open Start Menu Settings and go to the General Behavior tab. Uncheck the setting "Expand folder shortcuts" and click OK.

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Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Perfect, thanks!

Is there also any way to get it to open the actual location of the folder and display it in the Explorer address bar? Currently these folder links open with the link address path of "...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\FolderX" in the Explorer address bar which prevent me from going back "up" the folder tree as I would like to.

Well since you don't want them to expand, open this folder: %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\ (you can right click the Start button and click "Open"). Create a shortcut to the folder you want there using File Explorer (using New -> Shortcut wizard. Then it won't expand and when it opens you can go Up.

When you create a folder shortcut using the "Pin to Start Menu" method, it creates a special symbolic link instead of a regular shortcut which is why when you go Up, it goes back to the Start Menu folder.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Ah, so simple. I hadn't realised it was creating symbolic links like that when I dragged things in to it. No need to use the shortcut wizard, just moving a regular shortcut into the folder worked. Thank you!