**Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
If you were using a computer that was running Windows 10 before your current Windows 11 PC, then you have most likely noticed many of the differences between Windows 10 and Windows 11. One of the most notable differences between the two operating systems is the lack of customization that you can do to the Windows 11 taskbar.
When Windows 11 first came out, you couldn’t even pin a shortcut to the taskbar without some tweaking of the OS. Even though you can pin program shortcuts to the Windows 11 taskbar, you still cannot pin your personal files to the taskbar for easy access. In this article, we will be showing you how to pin documents & other types of personal files to the taskbar in Windows 11.
In order to be able to pin files to the taskbar in Windows 11, you will need to take a couple of steps to do so. The first thing you need to do is make a shortcut to the file you want to pin to the taskbar. The easiest way to do this is to copy the file and then right click on your desktop and choose the Paste Shortcut option.
The next step involves editing the properties of the shortcut you just made. To do so, right click on your shortcut file and choose Properties. On the Shortcut tab, click inside the Target box and add the word explorer before the beginning quotes and make sure there is a space after it.
Once you click OK, you will notice that your usual file icon changes to a File Explorer icon. If you are ok with this, you can leave it as is.
If not, then you can right click on the file and choose Properties once again. Then from the Shortcut tab, click the button that says Change Icon. Now you can choose from one of the built in Windows icon files and even browse to another folder on your computer that contains additional icon choices.
You can also download or create your own icon file to be used with your new shortcut. There are many websites that will allow you to download icon files that you can use for your file and folder shortcuts. Just be sure to download files that use the .ico file format.
Once you have your shortcut and icon configured, you can simply drag it onto the taskbar, and it will then be pinned to the taskbar and ready to use. Now whenever you click on the pinned taskbar icon, it will open the file that is associated with that shortcut.
This process will also work for pinning folders to the Windows 11 taskbar.
For additional training resources, check out our online IT training courses.
