Start menu structure- adding your own folders and deep menus

Hi, as an experiment I added a folder including other folders containing shortcuts in
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

In Win 10, this would have been seen in the Start Menu. Not in Win 11.

I tried placing a folder containing shortcuts directly there. Still not seen.

I'm guessing that perhaps only installed programs are now visible via the Start Menu.

I also used Brink's tutorial to change to the 'Classic' Win 10 style menu. Same behaviour.

This implies
- can't add e.g. portable programs to the start menu
- can't structure a very large start menu into categories

There could be new issues for people with large menus upgrading from e.g. Win 7.

(Ok.. the answer's Open Shell...)

dalchina said:

Hi, as an experiment I added a folder including other folders containing shortcuts in
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

In Win 10, this would have been seen in the Start Menu. Not in Win 11.

I tried placing a folder containing shortcuts directly there. Still not seen.

I'm guessing that perhaps only installed programs are now visible via the Start Menu.

I also used Brink's tutorial to change to the 'Classic' Win 10 style menu. Same behaviour.

This implies
- can't add e.g. portable programs to the start menu
- can't structure a very large start menu into categories

There could be new issues for people with large menus upgrading from e.g. Win 7.

(Ok.. the answer's Open Shell...)

Click to expand...

The answer shouldn't be 'Open Shell' or any other third party app.
A user should be able to do Basic things directly on Windows 11.&

But let's wait a little bit. It's still in Beta!!!

Maybe that might be a workaround

I have a couple of hundred programs organised into categorised folders like Maintenance, Utilities, Multimedia/Photos/Videos etc.. no Win 10 style menu copes with that. The Win 10 menu stripped out the folders and flattened out all the shortcuts, completely mixing them up. This one seems to ignore added folders. I've not tried putting one in a user folder rather than all users though.

MS seems to provide the start menu primarily for users with just a few programs installed with no flexibility.

An O/S used to be conceived of as providing a higher level of abstraction from the hardware, providing interfaces and features applications made us of- so it's perfectly valid to make use of 3rd party programs for dedicated functions or to provide more advanced or specialised features.

In All Apps they show as cascading folders...



but, as Pinned, they're only shortcuts...

Thanks, yes if you put them here
C:\Users\<userfoldername>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

... but not here (for all users):
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

I think I mentioned I'd only tried the latter.

But I don't see cascading folders- only shortcuts extracted from folders.

I.e. folder is

but start menu shows

Works from either folder if you "Restore Classic Start Menu"

Did you notice how the shortcuts are extracted from one of the subfolders and the subfolders themselves are discarded?
That's how Win 10's start menu behaves too, so I expected nothing better, really.

dalchina said:

Did you notice how the shortcuts are extracted from one of the subfolders and the subfolders themselves are discarded?
That's how Win 10's start menu behaves too, so I expected nothing better, really.

Click to expand...

Most shortcuts show from all folders..., the sub-folder themselves do not show..., un-installer exe's don't show for some reason!

dalchina said:

This implies
- can't add e.g. portable programs to the start menu
- can't structure a very large start menu into categories

Click to expand...

Worked for me....