Restoring Shortcut Functionality

Question: I do certain work in Microsoft Office and for some reason my shortcut (on desktop) won’t open it anymore. How can I get it to function again? I did a chkdsk and defrag last night. Did that have anything to do with this problem? Thank you.

Answer: CHKDSK and Defrag are not the cause of missing files. A shortcut is a small file that points to the real program. When you activate (run) your shortcut, it sends a message to the real program to start. If for any reason the program for which the shortcut was created is missing or has moved to a new location, the shortcut will not be able to activate that particular program. The question is, “how can you get the shortcut to work again?”

In simple terms you can do this by pointing the shortcut to the new location. I believe that the best option, here, is to create a whole new shortcut and forget about fixing the old. But, if you must know, I’ll go over the process of fixing it too.

Creating a new shortcut:
There are two ways to create a shortcut. The first one is by running the shortcut wizard. From the desktop, right click on an empty space. Click on New, then click shortcut. The wizard will guide you in the process. You can either type the path of your program or browse for it. Once you’ve done that a new functioning shortcut will appear on your desktop.

Another way (my favorite) is to simply open your browser to the program for which you want a shortcut and right-drag it to the desktop. That’s it! A small pop-up menu will appear select Create Shortcuts Here, and you are done.

Fixing an existing shortcut:
Fixing your current shortcut may be more complicated than to just creating a new one. But, It could be just as easy if you know the location of the executable program.

Start by right clicking on the shortcut and selecting properties. Pay close attention to the Target line where the existing path for your program is (was) found. Type the path for the new location. Don’t forget the proper spacing and it helps (a lot) if you include the quotation marks if you have actual spaces in the path. Click Apply and your shortcut will now be restored.

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