SAVE TIME BY PINNING TO THE TASK BAR

One of the great features of Windows 7 is in the task bar. You can easily "pin" programs you use regularly to the task bar. I've found the simplest way to do this is to have your program open, right click on it in the task bar, and click "pin this program to task bar".

As I regularly use Word 2010, Chrome, and Windows Explorer. They are always pinned to my task bar.

Once you've pinned a program to the task bar, you can right click on it, and it will show a list of the recent files you've opened within that program. So, by right clicking on my Word 2010 icon, I get a list of the last ten files I've opened.

It seems we often open the same files and templates regularly. With Windows 7, you can also "pin" a file you use regularly (or any file) to the list of recent files so that they always show up at the top of the list.

To do this, just open the file you want to have pinned to the top of the list. Right click on the Word icon in the task bar, and it will probably appear at the top of the recent files list. To the right of the file name will be a picture of a pin. Click on this pin, and the file will now always appear at the top of your list.

By pinning frequently opened programs to the task bar and frequently used files to the program list, you can save a lot of time. It is much simpler to right click on the task bar and select the regularly used file than to go through the start button or windows explorer every time.