How do I lock right-aligned toolbars in Windows 7 without them looking awful

Question

I like to create between 3 and 5 toolbars ( like the Quick launch toolbar) to house different sets of icons for daily use.

Games Office, Apps, Utils (stuff like that)

I like to right-align some of these so that all content is hidden and the chevrons (») appear. I then proceed to use each as a popup menu.

This works great, but as soon as I lock the toolbars, everything adjusts and looks horrible

Is there a way to account for this adjustment?

Answer 1

Instead of changing your resolution, you can also hide the icons in your system tray and/or your clock, shift all of your toolbars to the right, lock, then re-show your icons/clock.

Answer 2

I had the same problem with the alignment of the toolbar next to another toolbar showing a little piece of the first icon in the list.

To get rid of it, open the folder where the shortcuts are stored, cut-paste them somewhere else. resize the toolbar, lock it and then copy the shortcuts back to the folder.

Answer 3

As long as you don't reposition toolbars after they've been added you should be OK. As soon as you reposition one however, you're stuffed.

Try adding them with the taskbar already locked to avoid accidentally moving them.

Answer 4

The problem is that when you right align a toolbar in Windows 7 and then lock it it will still show part of the first icon. The rest of the icons will only appear in the >> menu, which is the desired effect.

Not sure why it happens, but I have found that the only way to get them sized correctly so that all the icons are hidden is to increase your monitor's resolution to a higher setting (must be wider than your standard viewing resolution), unlock the taskbar and configure your toolbars how you want them, lock the taskbar, and then change back to a lower resolution. You should only need to do this once after adding a new folder/toolbar.

There probably is a setting somewhere in the registry that could be used to change the toolbar widths manually, but the above workaround should also work.