Over the past several months I have received questions from readers asking how to do various things on Windows 10. Some were quite interesting and some I thought could be useful to other new Windows 10 users. Since sooner or later I believe we will all be “enjoying” what Windows 10 has to offer I thought I would review a few of them here. Read last week’s column regarding the coming of W10… ready or not.
One of the things I am often asked is, “Even though the Menu is much better than Windows 8.1 how do I make it more like Windows 7?”
One of the most obvious differences is that the menu in W10 contains many “Live Tiles.” I do not find them that useful and I have tried. I feel they give minimal information I usually do not care about and take up a lot of screen space.
You have a couple of options to change the launch menu. First, you can resize the live tiles if you wish to keep them but make them smaller. Right click on the live tile you want to make smaller, then select “resize” and either small, medium, wide or large. If you really want to get rid of them as I have done, right click on the live tile you want to remove and choose “Unpin from start.” Easy as that. You will have to do this to each one you want to remove.
Now you will have a large start menu that is really wide and empty if you remove all the tiles. You can resize the entire start menu by hovering your mouse pointer at the edge of the menu. After it is open, you will see a double headed arrow, click and drag to make it narrower or shorter.
If you have decided to keep any of the tiles you can also click them and drag them to different areas on the menu.
I get another common question about not being able to get to applications as quickly as in W7. I would agree; however, there are a couple of things you can do that will help you out. First thing is that you can click the start button and then, “All Apps” but you do not have to scroll down the list. Try typing the name of the application you are looking for and it will usually appear at the top of the list. If it is not first after you repeat this action a few times it will start rising to the top.
Also, while you are in the all apps area you can click on any of the large letters and a list of all the letters will pop up. Click the one the application starts with and you will see the app in the list.
One last one which defeats some of what you did in the menu sizing you did earlier, but I like this one. In all apps find the application you use a lot and want to get to quickly. Right click on it and choose “Pin to start.” The application will now appear in the menu area where the live tiles were/are. You can resize it as you did the other live tiles.
