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Congrats Mouse on another fine product!
Your pocket watch.
It's supposed to help keep it from getting scratched and dinged up by your small change.-40hz (November 26, 2010, 04:06 AM)
1. pin any shortcut to any file on your local machine to the Start Menu (contra Stoic Joker's last post, I think it has to be a shortcut that is pinned, not a file, because I can't see any way to edit the shortcut Target if I pin the actual file to the Start Menu ----gdv22 (November 22, 2010, 04:32 PM)
Ya know I was trying not to draw attention to my goofing the distinction earlier in the thread... But.
Regardless of whether you drag a file, program or shortcut to the start menu, it will create a shortcut to the target in what ever location it's stored.
On the other part results are inconclusive. Pinning a program to the Start Panel in 7 results in a shortcut being created in that folder.
Creating a shortcut in that folder does not automatically make it show up as pinned in the start Panel.
Deleting a (pinned) shortcut from the folder does not make it disappear from the Start Panel...But! It does make it stop functioning.
So they're apparently only loosely connected.-Stoic Joker (November 22, 2010, 05:45 PM)
Maybe I missed it, but did you try what Stoic Joker suggested (and I summarized above in item 4 of my list)?
If not, I still think it will work. But I think I've figured an even simpler way, where you won't have to edit the shortcut itself (i.e., Path/Target or "Start in" folder). It's simpler to do than it is to explain, but here goes (in more detail than I'm sure you need, but I'm hoping it will be clear enough for any less experienced future readers):
- 1. create two shortcuts on your desktop [RightClick > Send To > Desktop (create shorcut)], one shortcut to your My(Redirected)DocsXLS file in the redirected MyDocs folder and another shortcut to AnyOtherDocument from anywhere on your local machine (can probably be a shortcut to any kind of file, but I'm going to stay with documents just in case Windows does something invisible based on the filetype when pinning shortcuts that I don't know about)
- 2. rename the Shortcut to AnyOtherDocument (not the file it points to) whatever you eventually want your XLS pinned Start Menu shortcut to be named (e.g., MyPinnedXLSLink)
- 3. unless you want to permanently keep the MyPinnedXLSLink shortcut on your desktop, move it and the Shortcut to My(Redirected)DocsXLS to wherever you want to keep the MyPinnedXLSLink shortcut on your local machine
- 4. pin the MyPinnedXLSLink shortcut to your Start Menu with the Ctrl+Shift+RightClick context menu (or Ctrl+Shift Drag&Drop... ...your choice)
- 5. click on the Pinned MyPinnedXLSLink link on the Start Menu (it should still open AnyOtherDocument... ...just checking to make sure it's working properly
)
- 6. ...(now here's the sleight of hand)... ...rename the MyPinnedXLSLink shortcut on your Desktop or in its permanent location (i.e., NOT the Pinned MyPinnedXLSLink link on the Start Menu) AnythingYouWant
- 7. and finally, rename the Shortcut to MyDocsXLS on your Desktop or in its permanent location as MyPinnedXLSLink
- 8. click on the Pinned MyPinnedXLSLink link on the Start Menu, and (cross your fingers
- 9. if it all works the way you want, you can delete the renamed AnythingYouWant shortcut
This is essentially the same method outlined earlier, but instead of "modifying" the shortcut to point to a different Path/Target, I'm just renaming one working pinned shortcut so I can then rename another shortcut that points to the desired Target in the redirected MyDocs folder with the original pinned shortcut name. (And maybe I could have just said that and not been so detailed above, but sometimes I can't figure out how to summarize until I've already written it out in detail... ...oh, well!)
Unfortunately, I can't try this on my own network right now because my other machine is down... ...but I've tried it with shortcuts I modified to use the UNC (\\ComputerName\SharedFolder\Resource) network path to files in shared folders on my own working machine (\\WorkingMachine\SharedFolder\TestXLSfile.xls instead of G:\SharedFolder\TestXLSfile.xls) and it worked. So I think I've tricked my own machine to open a file from a pinned shortcut to what looks (to the machine) like a remote network file (analogous to your situation), even though the files are actually on my local machine. (I hope that's clear enough... ...can't figure out a clearer way to say it right now.)
So I'm smiling now, thinking it will work for you... ...but I hope I'll still be smiling when I see your replyThe problem with copying that file to the local machine is when I sync my laptop with the network at school, that file won't get copied over automatically.Sure, that would be one of the advantages of a redirected MyDocs folder. Another might be that if the IT department has a strong backup system in place, all users' MyDocs are regularly being backed up and retrievable if a local machine goes down. [EDIT: Oops, I just realized Stoic Joker already said that above: "The point being that everybody's documents are stored in a central location so they can be backed up in a reliable and expedient fashion."]
Let us know if the above works.-gdv22 (November 14, 2010, 02:40 AM)