Your favorite menu just got better at dealing
with your Favorites. This shortcut will let you cut through the maze of folders
on your Windows XP machine running Windows Explorer. Note: This tip applies to
both Windows XP Professional and Home.
Similar to Internet Explorer, the Favorites menu in Windows XP appears in
Windows Explorer. This makes it easy for you to access the Internet from within
Windows Explorer. However, it really serves no other purpose in Windows
Explorer—even though it has the potential to do so much more.
You can make hard disk and network navigation much easier and more efficient if
you use the Favorites menu as a place to keep shortcuts to deeply nested
folders on your hard disk, as well as to network drives you access frequently.
Doing so just takes a bit of rethinking about how you use and organize the
Favorites menu.
Here's how.
1. Press [Windows]R to access the Run dialog box, type Favorites in the Open
text box, and click OK to open the Favorites folder in Windows Explorer.
2. Use the Make A New Folder command in the File And Folder Tasks pane to
create three new folders, naming them Internet, Local Folders, and Network
Folders.
3. Move all of your Internet links, except the folder titled Links, into the
newly created Internet folder.
4. Navigate to some of the deeply nested folders on your hard disk that you
access frequently and use the Add To Favorites command on the Favorites menu to
create links in the Local Folders folder.
5. Navigate to some of the network shares that you access frequently and use
the Add To Favorites command to create links in the Network Folders folder.
Now, when you're in Windows Explorer you can use the Local Folders and Network
Folders shortcuts on the Favorites menu to make quick work of your regular hard
disk and network navigation.