How to customise the Windows Taskbar

Most running programs also appear as a rectangular button on the long thin bar called the Taskbar that extends across the bottom of the screen.

A minimised window can be restored by clicking its button, but the reverse is also true: if a program is running and the window is shown on screen, clicking its button on the Taskbar once will minimise the window.

Right-click a Taskbar button and a range of options relevant to that program will appear. These options include closing the program and restoring it to the desktop, but the precise list depends on the version of Windows you are using – Windows 7 allows program makers to choose exactly what appears here.

Open a few web browser windows, documents and other programs, and eventually the Taskbar will fill up. To help out Windows can group together similar Taskbar buttons.

So, for example, if you have five Word documents open, instead of having five separate buttons they will all be grouped together under a single button on the Taskbar.

To access the individual documents, left-click the button and choose from the list. Vista and Windows 7 will display preview windows.

If you want Windows to always display a button for each window, right-click the Start button, select Properties, choose the Taskbar tab then remove or add a tick from the ‘Group similar taskbar buttons’ option.

In Windows 7 the grouping options are in the Properties window, under the Taskbar Buttons dropdown box.

The Taskbar can also be resized to make room for more buttons. Right-click an empty portion of the Taskbar and click on the ‘Lock the taskbar’ option so the tick is removed.

Move the mouse to anywhere along the top edge of the Taskbar (the arrow pointer will change to a two-arrowed pointer) and click and hold the left button. The Taskbar can be resized by dragging it up or down.

You can also drag the Taskbar to any other side of the screen, but generally we do not recommend this.

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