How to edit the Start menu

[StuartR]

On my Windows 7 installation I had organized all my Start Menu into two levels of nested folders.

When this migrated to Windows 10 I have MANY new things on the start menu, that I don't want, and some things that were in my old start menu have disappeared.

How do I edit the Windows 10 start menu to put it in a format that I want?

[JoeP]

See 8 Ways to Customize the Windows 10 Start Menu. Many people have found they don't like the options available in Windows 10 to customize the start menu and have chosen to replace it. You might want to investigate Start10™, the first Windows® 10 Start menu alternative, Classic Shell, & StartIsBack.

Joe

[Rudi]

The last point in Joe's link (8 Ways to customize the Windows 10 Start Menu) is the best: Remove All Live Tiles and Make It Look Like Windows 7

[JoeP]

Not if you find live tiles useful. Familiarity with the Windows 7 start menu does not necessarily make it better just comfortable.

Joe

[StuartR]

I may well be tempted with the suggestion to Remove All Live Tiles and Make It Look Like Windows 7

The live tiles don't include any apps that I would find useful, for example the photo app doesn't seem able to link to my photos on Amazon cloud, I don't intend to use Cortana (I do all my searching with DuckDuckGo because it guarantees not to store any historical data), etc.

[HansV]

I have pinned the programs that I use most to the Taskbar.
I display some 20 other programs that I use frequently as tiles. There are no really "live" tiles among them - I removed all the nonsense that Microsoft displays there by default. I have organized the tiles into logical (to me at least) groups: utilities, graphics, etc.
I have very little on the left hand side of the Start menu, so it looks more like the Windows 8.1 version than the Windows 7 version, but I find it very convenient to use.
If I need another program I click Start and type part of its name. I seldom use All Apps.

[JoeP]

I have a mixture of live & static tiles. Like Hans I too have my most frequently used programs pinned to the taskbar.

I suggest you get in the habit of using search to find programs in the start menu. It is easy and fast but is an adjustment from clicking through several levels of folders.

Joe

[StuartR]

I'm slowly getting there, but I do have issues with adding programs to the start menu folder.

For example I have Office 2010 on this computer, and I had a start menu folder that contained links to all the Office 2010 programs as well as a few others. The Office 2010 programs don't appear on the start menu, even though the others do. I wonder if this might be because the same programs appear elsewhere on the start menu, but down a couple of layers deep in a folder structure

[HansV]

I have pinned the Office programs that I use most to the Taskbar, and created tiles for the others ("Pin to Start").

[StuartR]

Thank you Hans. I have pinned some to the task bar, but these Office 2010 shortcuts don't offer Pin to Start

[HansV]

You can open C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14 in File Explorer, then right click EXCEL.EXE and select Pin to Start from the context menu, etc.

[StuartR]

You can open C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14 in File Explorer, then right click EXCEL.EXE and select Pin to Start from the context menu, etc.

That worked. Thank you.