Quick access to frequently used files in Windows

You can of course put a file that you open regularly on the Desktop. But that’s not the only way to open it quickly. Would you like to have a file at hand, but don’t want your Desktop to become cluttered? Then ‘Pin’ the file to the corresponding program.

Pinning is basically pinning a certain file to a fixed place. The corresponding icon is a thumbtack. For example, you can ensure that when Word starts up, pinned files appear immediately. From there, you can quickly access them. But you can also pin them to the Taskbar. Handy for documents that you regularly need.

How to pin a file in Word:

• Open the file you want to pin.
• Click in the Ribbon on File. In the middle of the page you will now see all kinds of recently opened documents.
• Move your mouse to the file you want to pin.
• Click the thumbtack that appears after the file name.

You don’t have to do anything now. Pin more files in the same way if you want. Have Excel files or PowerPoints you want to pin? This works the same way, only you have to open Excel or PowerPoint.

Now to quickly open the file, start Word (or Excel or PowerPoint) and click Pinned. It’s next to the ‘Recent’ heading. All your pinned files are listed under ‘Pinted’. Click on the desired file to open it.

Another way to get quick access is to pin the file to the Taskbar. To do this, the program itself must first be found in the Taskbar. Read how to do this in the article ‘Put a program on the Taskbar’.

In this example, Word is pinned to the Taskbar. Now we also want to pin a specific document:

• Right-click on Word in the Taskbar.
• Hover over the document you want to pin. This is only possible with recent documents.
• Click the thumbtack after the file name.

The next time you want to open the file, right-click Word in the Taskbar again. The pinned files are automatically at the top.