Salutations!

Today’s Topic: How to pin WF to your Windows Taskbar 
Excel/Office Tip: How to customize your Quick Access Toolbar

You have Email, a browser and MS Word open and you realize you don't have WorkFlows open.  Such a pain* to close everything and find WF on your desktop.  Well, read on to learn how to have WF always right at your mouse-tip....

If you like the convenience of having common apps like Outlook always acccessible from you taskbar, you've probably already tried adding WorkFlows and discovered that it can not simply be added like most other Windows apps.  If you right click the shortcut, the expected option for pinning it to Start or the Task Bar just isn't there.  That is because Microsoft chose to not permit certain file types from being pinned--and batch (.bat) files being one such type.  

There is however a work around.

Right click the short cut and click on Properties at the bottom of the pop-up. 

On the Target line, you will see "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sirsi\JWF\wf.bat"

At the very front of that line, type in cmd /c  The updated Target line should now read: 

cmd /c  "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sirsi\JWF\wf.bat"

Click the Apply button.  You may get:

In which case, click Continue and then click OK to save the changes and close the properties box.

Right click on the short cut now and you should have the options to Pin To Taskbar or Pin To Start:

Excel/Office Tip: How to customize your Quick Access Toolbar

Are there functions in Excel or Word or Outlook that you do frequently? For example, I use Excel's Text to Columns

  all the time when working with reports. Or I like to use Format Painter to try and keep font size and type consistent. Well Text to Columns  is found on the Data tab and Format Painter is found on the Home tab, and I hate having to switch tabs for something I use all the time.  Kind of like wanting WF pinned to the Taskbar. 

Never fear! Office apps have their own internal "taskbar" which they call a Quick Access Toolbar or QAT.  It can be above or below the main Ribbon--I always choose below because it is closer to where I'm working. Here's what my Excel  QAT looks like:

If you open Word or Excel, you might not see the QAT. Sometimes it is hidden by default. To find it, go all the way to the Right side of the Ribbon--under the X to close your file:

Click on Show Quick Access Toolbar, and it will magically appear. 

To Customize the QAT click on the little down arrow on the right of the QAT:

If you don't have a lot of things on your QAT, the down arrow may be much farther to the left--but it is there.  Even if your QAT is empty, the little down arrow is there. You'll get:

There are a lot of things you can add just on this drop-down alone, but there are so, soooo many more functions under More Commands...!  

By default it will show Popular Commands, but you can Choose commands from: other options like All Commands. Find the tool you want to add, click Add,  and it will appear in the table on the right. You can then use the up/down arrows to re-arrange the tools on your QAT. Click OK  and you're done!

Even quicker way to add things to your QAT (if you don't care about the order they appear) is to find the tool on the ribbon, Right-click and select Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

You can have different QATs for each of the Office products. The best way to learn about customizing the QAT is just to do it. Experiment with which tools you use the most and trying to find them in the More Commands... Have fun adding and removing stuff--it really can be a great time-saver having this or that function right at your mouse-tips.

* Secret Tip: Windows + D makes getting to your Desktop much less of a pain!!

Share & Enjoy!
Karla