Tutorial Thursday
Grouping similar Taskbar buttons in Windows is either a feature you love or hate. It’s nice because when your Taskbar starts to get full it will start grouping applications together to conserve space. For example, if you have 10 Firefox windows open at a time they will only show up as a single button on the Taskbar if you have grouping enabled.
This may not only help reduce clutter in your Taskbar, but for some people it could help maintain their sanity. The only thing is that the grouping of similar buttons will only occur once crowding sets in on the Taskbar. Don’t worry, it’s actually possible to let the feature kick in regardless of how full your Taskbar is. Just look at this screenshot I took after applying the tweak I’m about to show you:
It grouped the two Windows Explorer windows into a single button despite there being nothing else on the Taskbar. Feel free to proceed if you’re running Windows XP or Vista…
–Customizing Taskbar Grouping–
- To simplify the process we’ve created this registry file that you can download (advanced users can find the registry information toward the end of the article). After you download that go ahead and extract the file. If you double-click on it right away it will set the Taskbar to start grouping when two or more of the same applications are open.
If you want to change it to, for example, group only when there are three or more of the same applications open you’ll need to edit the file. To do this right-click on the TaskbarGroupSize.reg file you downloaded, and choose the Edit option. You would replace the “2″ with a “3″ in this case resulting in the line looking like this:
"TaskbarGroupSize"=dword:00000003Similarly setting the value to “0″ will force the Taskbar grouping to return to the default method.
- Now you need to enable the setting. If you feel like killing some time you could restart your computer or logoff, but it’s probably easier to just re-enable the option in the Taskbar properties. To do this right-click on the Taskbar and choose the Properties option. Uncheck the Group similar taskbar buttons option if it is already checked, and then click Apply. Now check the Group similar taskbar buttons box, and click OK:
- The feature should now be enabled. If you didn’t modify the Registry setting in Step 1 you should see that any two similar windows will be grouped together regardless of how much space is being occupied in the Taskbar:
- You can go back and modify the Registry setting in Step 1 at anytime. Running it again will merely overwrite the current value, and setting it to “0″ will return the grouping back the Windows default method.
–Advanced Users–
If you’re an advanced user and know your way around the Windows Registry you can create the necessary value yourself. You’ll need to navigate to this location:
HKEY_CURRRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
Then you’ll need to create a new DWORD (32-bit) value called TaskbarGroupSize there. A value of “0″ will disable the feature, while a larger numerical setting (2 or higher) will initiate the grouping when that number of similar windows is open.
–Overview–
So now I’m curious… how many of you use Taskbar grouping in the first place? I generally don’t use it, but I know a lot of people who do. Drop us a comment below with your thoughts.
Ryan:
I normally don’t have too many windows open at any given time. I like to use tabs instead of windows. They are easier to use and navigate. I use a nice Firefox add-on that colors the tabs which makes the screen more attractive.
Cheers,
Omar.-
Use TweakUI if you did not upgrade to Vista yet and it does the same thing without messing with registry.
It was already there!
That was one of the first “features” that I ditched when I got my first Vista machine. It made closing or maximizing one of, say, seven spreadsheets 10x more time consuming than necessary. I like to have all of my open tabs seperate, even if they are very small. If Opera or Firefox did this, I would question the utility of having tabs at all.
Good call… forgot that TweakUI included an option to do that.
It’s really a feature that you either love or hate. I think for casual users who don’t switch back and forth between windows frequently it would be nice to have, but power users would probably find it to be more of a burden.
I use it all the time. Too many things open and too hard to find otherwise.
Thanks!
Ryan,
Thanks for the tweak, works great. When I test drove it, I noticed that I cannot right click on a group of Excel docs to close the entire group, as it is “grayed out.” Word docs, and whole folders are no problem to close as a group.
Do you know if this is just a feature of Excel? I noticed some time ago that I cannot have two Excel doc windows open on the screen. I tried cascade and both tile modes, but no go. I do not know how to use Excel tabs yet, which sounds like a nice feature, but sometimes I want/need to be able to have two docs side by side to work between them. Is this not possible in Excel? Have not yet Googled the Excel question, but will.
Anyway, thanks again, the groups of 2 or > is a big help for Mr. Monk types like me.
Last, but not least, I opened a new tab for this page before I started typing this comment, because losing what I have written if I need to Google or refer to a different site while posting is really frustrating. (Sorry, left those last three words out on the first post, hence the “Monkism.” I usually review/edit before I post, but forgot to proof this post when I could not find the “submit comment” button on the first page.)
So, when I thought I was finished, I could not find a button to post. I looked at the other open window and found one to the left of the “find out how to track new comments!” below this text area. Is there a time/size limit for writing posts? I guess I will find out when I try to copy/paste this to the other page.
Ryan,
I guess I am not very patient. I registered for this site so I can track comments, but have not received an email password. I then tried the login and selected “forgot password” to prompt a new email, but still nothing.
I am used to these sites sending confirmation emails before I can blink. Is this site different?
I did just find out how the spam prevention works. Works well, in fact, much better than those goofy spam busters that I sometimes cannot read, and as a result, type the wrong word or nonsense letters/symbols.
Ryan,
Nevermind. I stumbled on the real registration page via the forums table of contents, so now I am registered.
The spam buster on that page does have the “obscured” letters, but at least I can listen to them so I know what they are if I cannot see them clearly. Still better than the rest of them.
I had been trying to register from the button on this page which transfered me to a WordPress registration page. I just realized that it will not email me (I think) because am already registered with that site. “Stupid is, as stupid does.”
Should work in Excel without any troubles. Maybe it depends on what version you’re using.
Glad you got it worked out. The registration emails are normally fired off immediately, and so I don’t know why it wouldn’t have worked for you. Unless your spam filter caught it.
sa-weeet!! I always have an insane number of tabs open. The usual grouping had always worked in the past but now that I use mulitiple 22″ monitors and have switched my display to be one long desktop (instead of the usual dual monitor setup), I have a about a 38″ long taskbar and it was taking a while to fill it up enough to group them.
now that I found THIS, Im set!!
Thanks a lot!!
Excel appears to disable the functionality on the taskbar whenever you have more than one workbook open within a single exe. If all of your workbooks have a separate instance of excel.exe running, the taskbar works as expected.
Thank you! I really use grouping at work. Even with grouping ON I have my taskbar full!