Shortcuts View

InstallShield 2019

Project • The Shortcuts view is available in the following project types:

Basic MSI
DIM
InstallScript
InstallScript MSI
Merge Module
MSI Database
MSM Database
Transform

The Shortcuts view provides a simple, visual way to create shortcuts to your application on the target system. This view contains a Shortcuts explorer that shows a set of predefined destination folders under which you can create shortcuts and subfolders. InstallShield offers the following standard shortcut destinations.

Standard Shortcut Destinations

Shortcut Destination

Project Type

Description

Programs Menu and Startup

Basic MSI, DIM, InstallScript, InstallScript MSI, Merge Module, MSI Database, MSM Database, Transform

The Programs Menu and Startup folders are located on the Start menu. The Programs Menu folder is the industry-standard place for installing product shortcuts. The Startup folder should contain shortcuts to only those items that need to be launched whenever Windows starts.

Send To

Basic MSI, DIM, InstallScript MSI, Merge Module, MSI Database, MSM Database, Transform

The Send To folder is available when an end user right-clicks a file; the context menu that is displayed contains a command called Send To. If you create a shortcut for your program in this folder, an end user can click any file and send it to your product.

For example, you might want your end users to be able to open an HTML page in Notepad. If you created a shortcut to Notepad in the Send To folder in the Shortcuts view, end users could right-click an HTML file and click Notepad from your Send To menu. The source file for that page opens in Notepad.

Desktop

Basic MSI, DIM, InstallScript, InstallScript MSI, Merge Module, MSI Database, MSM Database, Transform

The Desktop folder contains shortcuts for the end user’s desktop. When you create a shortcut in the Desktop folder, your product’s icon is displayed on the end user’s desktop.

Note • The desktop is the most visible place to put a shortcut, but too many shortcut icons can clutter the end user’s desktop.

When you add a new shortcut, InstallShield adds it as a new node to the Shortcuts explorer in this view. The new shortcut node is displayed with the same icon that is selected in the Icon File setting for the shortcut—which is the icon that is used when the shortcut is added to target systems at run time—unless either of the following conditions is true:

The project type is InstallScript.
The shortcut is for a preexisting file on the target system.

For both of the aforementioned conditions, the icon file is not known until run time. Therefore, InstallShield shows the following icon for each shortcut in the Shortcuts explorer, instead of displaying the icon that is used at run time on target systems.

InstallShield also uses this icon for a shortcut in the Shortcuts explorer if the icon file does not contain an icon.

Note • You cannot create shortcuts to a dynamically linked file. For more information, see Limitations of Dynamic File Linking.

For details about each of the settings that you can configure for shortcuts, folders, as well as tiles, see:

Shortcut Settings
Folder Settings
Tile Configuration Settings

See Also