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Start a program from the taskbar

You can start a program—or additional instances of a program—quickly and easily by pinning it to the taskbar.

Start programs from the taskbar using the Jump List

To start a program

1. Click the program's icon on the taskbar. The button on the taskbar is highlighted to indicate the program is running.
   • If one item from a program is open, clicking the icon minimizes the item. If two or more items are open, clicking the icon shows previews of the open items.
2. To open another instance of a running program (a second WordPad document, for example), right-click the icon to open the Jump List, and then click the name of the program.

Tips

• To start a program or open additional instances quickly without opening the Jump List, you can also press Shift and click the program's icon on the taskbar, or point to the program's icon and click the wheel button on the mouse.

• You can open an item on the desktop by dragging the item's desktop icon onto a program icon on the taskbar. This option also makes it easy to take a file created in one program and open it in a different program. For example, you could drag a Notepad document from the desktop onto a WordPad icon on the taskbar to open that document in WordPad.

Regardless of the order in which you open new instances of running programs, all instances of a program are grouped together, so that you can see them at a glance.

 To close a file or program

• To close a window from the taskbar, do one of the following:
  • To close a file and the program that opened it, right-click the icon to open the Jump List, and then click Close window.
  • To close all open items for a program, open the Jump List for the program, and then click Close all windows. 
  • To close just one file out of several open items for a single program, point at the program icon on the taskbar. When the previews of the open files appear, point at the file you want to close, and then click its Close button.

 To start a program as an administrator

• To run a program from the taskbar using administrator account privileges, do one of the following:
  • Press Shift and right-click the icon, click Run as administrator, and then provide confirmation, if prompted.
  • If the program is running, open the Jump List, press Shift and right-click the name of the program, click Run as administrator, and then provide confirmation if prompted.

  Tip

  • To open a program as an administrator, you can also press Ctrl+Shift and click the icon or the name of the icon in the Jump List.