Windows 10: Add Desktop shortcut to Start Menu (Broken in Rev 1803)

The previous technique used to add shortcuts from the desktop to Start involved adding shortcuts to C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. This used to cause these shortcuts to appear in the start menu (perhaps under recently add items) but no longer works. I was looking for a method to add a shortcut to a file or website to my Start without using Edge (which has the option to pin the current page to Start). Any ideas? Thanks.

:)

 

How to pin shortcut to start menu.

At first, you can create a shortcut in your Programs folder
(in a hidden folder C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs). The shortcut appears in
All apps list. Then you can pin it to Start menu / Taskbar as Mayank Gupta10 suggested.

The common way is to create a shortcut on the Desktop.
But the more elegant way is creating Custom toolbars.

 

Is my start menu broken?

Just updated as well, and thought I would finally give the windows 10 start menu a go, and not use classic shell. But I'm unsure whether my start menu is broken, and I should do a clean install.

• I can drag a tile from the start menu to the desktop, but I can't drag a desktop icon to the start menu so it becomes a windows 10 tile icon?
• I can right-click a tile and pin a shortcut to the taskbar, but again, I can't right-click a shortcut from the taskbar and pin it to the start menu.
• When dragging tiles around, I have to wait before the animation is done until I can start the next drag.

• I only have two options, large square or small square. Wasn't there a time, where you could have wide and tall and huge tiles? Or does that only works for apps :/? (I don't use any windows 10 apps)
• I can't rename a pinned shortcut?
• And is there still no option to add custom images to icons and make them look nice?

Have Microsoft not had 4 years with these new "tile icons"? And it is till this bad?

The only way for me to pin a program to the start menu is by locating it in the programs list in the start menu and drag or right-click to pin it. I use multiple versions of the same program, but the programs list in the start
menu only shows one, so how on earth to I add a shortcut to the other versions then?

 

Broken shortcut on Start Menu program list


I found a broken shortcut on my account's Start Menu program list, located all the way on the bottom.

Attachment 183304

Right-clicking and uninstalling doesn't do anything. I tried some of the solutions found online and most of them don't work. Is there any way for me to fix this mild annoyance?