How To Pin Any Folder to Start Menu in Windows 7

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Even though it’s not longer available in Windows 8, Start Menu is still a convenient place that can be very handy for a lot of us. You can pin almost all programs to it and you can do it easily from the right-click context menu. However, you can’t pin folders to it, which sucks to people like me navigating through folders pretty much all day long.

Here is a registry hack that you can use to trick the system to allow you to pin almost any folders you are frequently using to Start Menu.

First, launch Registry Editor by pressing Win+R shortcut, typing “regedit”, and hitting Enter.

Then, navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers.

And right click the empty space on the right panel, then New and Key, to create a new key name as below:

{a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8}

Pin Folder to Start Menu Registry thumb - How To Pin Any Folder to Start Menu in Windows 7

The result is immediate. You don’t have to restart the machine to see it. Just go to the folder you want to pin, hold down the Shift key and right-click it, and select the new added Pin to Start Menu command.

Pin Folder to Start Menu Right click folder thumb - How To Pin Any Folder to Start Menu in Windows 7

And here is the result, the folder appears in the Start Menu. Later on, you can right click the folder and click Remove From This List if you don’t want it listed there anymore.

Pin Folder to Start Menu Folder pinned thumb - How To Pin Any Folder to Start Menu in Windows 7

As W7H reader Stan suggested, here (right click the link and save as…) is also a registry import file that you can download and import.

[Updated on Nov. 14, 2012]

Thanks to W7H reader Alex. There is actually a much much easier way of pinging any folder into the Start menu. Just simply drag the folder over to the Start menu orb and the folder will be pinned to there once you released your mouse. Both left and right click work the same way. Cool.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Hey, this is a great tip, but I have tried and it doesn’t seem to work on my win7.

    Win7Pro SP1

    Hope it will work for the other, this is a great trick 😉

    ps: it’s easy to create a .reg file to be able to spread this trick around even more easily

    Stan

    • Sorry and thanks, Stan.

      I made two editorial errors which I’ve now fixed. First, even though the registry key I posted in screenshot is correct, I didn’t type it correctly in the post. and second, you will need to shift + right click the folder in order to let the option show up.

      I’ve also made the registry import file available, thanks to the suggestion.

  2. I tried both the screen setup and downloaded the Reg mode? Shouldnt the new reg setting have some data in it? Its just set to default value data of 0000

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