Arranging Your Desktop Icons

Busy computers always have Icons cluttered all over the desktop. Time is important. Therefore, you have to keep the desktop clean in order to easily identify an Icon on the desktop whenever you need it. You can rearrange all the icons to one side, delete unwanted icons, or get all the icons to one folder on the desktop.

Sometimes, we form a habit of saving Word files to the desktop rather than to the documents folder. With time, the desktop gets cluttered with Word, Excel, and other files. It is not bad practice to download things to the desktop. However, such files should not be left on the desktop for long. Downloaded files should be deposited in the "my documents" folder or another folder of your choosing.

Windows 7 & Vista

To auto-arrange Windows 7 desktop Icons, all you need do is to right-click the desktop -> View -> Auto arrange. The same applies to Windows Vista. By right-clicking the desktop you could rearrange the Icons and also change the size of the Icons. Also, you can seek to arrange the Icons by type, name, date modified, and size. Lastly, you can drag items around with the mouse. Be careful using auto arrange if you arranged the icons yourself as you won't be able to get your icons back to where you moved them without moving them all over again.

Windows XP

Just like the later versions of Windows OS, mere dragging and dropping your Windows XP icons also leads to icons not being well aligned in proper columns and rows. So in lieu of this, you can get Windows to automatically arrange them for you. You can do this by right-clicking the desktop-> Arrange icons By-> Align to Grid. By doing this, Windows XP enables your icons to align into even rows and columns the next time you drag them.

What about arranging icons into rows without necessarily changing the order? You can do this by right-clicking the desktop -> Arrange icons By -> Auto Arrange.

The number of icons you have on your desktop depends on the number of applications you have installed. One smart way to provide additional space for your Icons is to create a desktop folder for Icons you rarely use. To do this, right-click on the desktop -> Arrange icons By -> Run Desktop Clean up Wizard. On the desktop clean up Wizard Menu, click on Next -> select the boxes for the Icons you would like to move to a folder and uncheck the boxes for the Icons that you want to remain on your desktop. Click Next and click Finish. Now, Windows XP creates an unused Desktop Shortcuts folder on your desktop. To remove any unused icons, you just have to simply drag the icon to the folder.

Tip: You can decide to hide the desktop icons by right-clicking on your desktop -> View-> follow the drop down menu and click on Show desktop. To restore the desktop icons, simply click on the show desktop button again just like you did to hide the icons in the first place.

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-By Dominic

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