Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

ShortcutsMan is a free utility for Windows XP (32-bit only) that allows you to easily manage the shortcuts on your desktop in Windows. It displays the details about all the shortcuts you have on your desktop and under your Start menu.

NOTE: ShortcutsMan will also work in 32-bit Windows versions prior to Windows XP.

Download ShortcutsMan from

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shman.html.

ShortcutsMan is a standalone program and does not require any installation. To start using it, just unzip the downloaded file and double-click the shman.exe file.

When you run ShortcutsMan, a list of all the shortcuts on your desktop and under your Start menu is loaded.

Broken shortcuts, which point to files that don’t exist, are automatically highlighted in pink in the list. To delete one or more broken shortcuts, select the check box next to the shortcut(s) you want to delete, and click the Delete Selected Shortcuts button on the toolbar.

You can also try to fix broken shortcuts by using the Resolve Selected Shortcuts option. If the filename was changed or moved to another folder or the folder name changed, the resolving process fixes the shortcut so it points to a valid filename.

Select the check boxes next to the shortcuts you to resolve, and click the Resolve Selected Shortcuts button.

A confirmation dialog box displays asking if you want to resolve the selected shortcuts. Click Yes.

NOTE: If you do not want to be asked to confirm your actions, select Ask Before Any Action under the Options menu such that there is no check mark next to it, as pictured below.

ShortcutsMan finds the valid files for the selected shortcuts and resolves the paths to these files. If ShortcutsMan was able to resolve the selected shortcuts, there should be a “No” in the Broken Shortcut column for the shortcuts.

You can choose not to have broken shortcuts highlighted. To turn off this option, select Mark Broken Shortcuts from the Options menu, such that there is no check mark next to the option.

If you want to fix all the broken shortcuts at one time, select Select Broken Shortcuts from the Edit menu. All the broken shortcuts in your list are selected.

To see the values for all of the columns for a shortcut, highlight the shortcut (the check boxes are ignored for this action) and select Properties from the File menu.

This is useful if all of the columns you want to view are not visible in the main ShortcutsMan window.

NOTE: You cannot change the values for the shortcut on the Properties dialog box.

To change the properties for a shortcut, highlight the shortcut in the list (again, the check boxes are ignored for this action) and select Edit Shortcut from the File menu.

The Properties dialog box displays for the highlighted shortcut. Click the Shortcut tab and edit the settings as desired. Click OK when you are finished.

ShortcutsMan allows you to choose which columns you want available on the main window. To select columns to view, select Choose Columns from the View menu.

The Column Settings dialog box displays. By default, all the columns are selected. To make a column not visible on the main window, click the check box next to the column name such that there is no check mark in the check box.

You can also change the order of the columns. To move a column, select the column and click Move Up or Move Down to change its position.

Click OK once you have finished adjusting the columns.

If you want to view a report of all the shortcuts in HTML format, select HTML Report – All Items from the View menu. You can also view a report in HTML format only for selected shortcuts by selecting the HTML Report – Selected Items option.

The HTML Report opens in your default web browser, and the report.html file is saved to the same folder as shman.exe.

You can also save a report of selected shortcuts to a file (.html, .txt, .xml formats) to a location you choose. Select the shortcuts you want in the list and select Save Selected Items from the File menu.

NOTE: You can easily select all the shortcuts in the list by selecting Select All from the Edit menu.

On the Select a filename to save dialog box, select a format in which you want to save the shortcuts from the Save as type drop-down list. Navigate to the location where you want to save your file. Specify a name for the file in the File name edit box and click Save.

If you only want the information for a few shortcuts, select the check boxes next to the desired shortcuts and select Copy Selected Items from the Edit menu.

The information from the columns in ShortcutsMan for the selected shortcuts is copied as text and can be pasted into any text editor or word processor. We pasted the text into Notepad, as shown below.

If you are still using Windows XP and you have installed and uninstalled a lot of programs on your computer, ShortcutsMan is a convenient utility for managing your shortcuts. Shortcuts are not always deleted when you uninstall software.

by Lori Kaufman