How To Organize Your Program Files

I’m sure you all organize your files in some manner, but how many of you organize your “Program Files”, that which you get through the Windows Start? That we can organize even those isn’t common knowledge and I’ve never seen a second soul do it.

Purpose
Most softwares that we install on the PC place a shortcut folder containing shortcuts to important functions and documentation, for our convenience. Those running a large number of softwares realize the cumbersome process of sieving through a long list before finding the required one. To make matters worse, this list is not always in alphabetical order. Users in a hurry, or newbies with little experience to distinguish one shortcut from the other are known to have clicked the “Uninstall” link accidentally.

The exercise of organizing your program files avoids such accidents. While organizing all the softwares at once, which you do during the first time, can be tedious, it takes barely a minute for every software installed in the future.

Method
Right clicking on the Windows Start button gives you a list of options. Choosing “Explore All Users” takes you to “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu”. One folder in it is “Programs” which has all the shortcuts that you see in “Start -> Programs”. Here you can create the custom shortcut folders that you want (right-click -> New -> Folder) and populate them with shortcuts moved from other folders.

e.g. Create folders called “Browsers” and “Media Players”. Move the shortcuts to Internet Explorer, and any other browsers to “Browsers” and the shortcuts to Windows Media Player and other audio and video players to “Media Players”.

Delete all shortcuts that you may not use. I tend to delete all “Uninstall” and “Help” shortcuts. It is more secure to be able to uninstall softwares only through the “Add or Remove Programs” and the documentation files are rarely perused by most readers anyway. Remember that deleting these amount to only deleting shortcuts and the original files can still be found in the appropriate directory in “C:\Program Files”.

You can also drag and drop the shortcuts from one folder to other through “Start -> Programs” itself without the need to open “Explore All Users”. Shortcuts of applications installed elsewhere can also be created here (right-click -> New -> Shortcut -> Browse).

Look
The above screenshot shows how my own Programs are organized. I have chiefly six shortcut folders: Media Players (Audio & Video Players), Browsers (Web and Windows Explorers), Editors and Viewers, Messengers (Chat clients), Tools (which again has a number of sub-folders of shortcuts).

Renaming and moving shortcuts, and having folders and sub-folders of shortcuts seems tough to navigate on first glance. But it has the advantage of being arranged in alphabetical order without redundancy of multiple shortcuts and is clutter-free. I don’t have to read and reread the list to see whether the program I’m searching for is available or not, and I can definitely not uninstall any software by mistake.

That is my two cents worth on organizing. Is it worth giving it a try? Is it too tedious? Or do you have a better way altogether? Le me know what you think using the comment form below.

Image Source: Microsoft