Dear Computer Lady,

The longer I use my computer, the more icons there are cluttering up my desktop. What can I do to make it neat and clean again?

Beth 

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Dear Beth,

To have a neater desktop, you want to go through and delete the icons that you don’t use. Many programs put advertisements for their website on your desktop, or a link to get free AOL. These shortcuts, you can just drag to the recycle bin, or right click on them and then click “Delete”.

Once you have gotten rid of the junk, try to group the similar icons. For example, I made a folder on my desktop named “Palm” and moved all the shortcuts for my palm pilot into that folder.

Now when I want to add something to a program on my Palm, I just open that folder and chose the program I want to use.

You can do the same thing with website shortcuts you might have on your desktop, or games.

To create a folder on your desktop, just right click on the desktop, point to “New” and then click on “Folder”. Type a name for your new folder and you are all set to use it.

Elizabeth