Grouping taskbar buttons in Vista

In short, the point of taskbar button grouping is so that you your taskbar does not become cluttered with icons representing multiple open instances of the same application. If you have 10 Microsoft Word windows open, for instance, the operating system should 'group' those icons together under one icon on the taskbar.

Clicking the one icon will then show you a flyout menu with all of the open instances represented. You can then choose which instance you wish to switch to. It's a much faster and easier way to switch to an open task if you have lots of tasks open.

In XP, grouping kicked in much sooner than it does in Vista, and by installing the free TweakUI application from Microsoft, you could control exactly how many instances of one application could be opened before grouping would start.

You turn grouping on or off in both XP and Vista by right-clicking the Start button, clicking Properties from the pop-up menu, clicking the Taskbar tab, and then selecting or clearing the 'Group similar taskbar buttons' option.

In Vista, unfortunately, taskbar buttons are left ungrouped until you have so many applications open that you no longer have room on the taskbar to hold them all. For those with large monitors, that can mean you end up with many, many taskbar buttons before any grouping occurs - and your productivity will slow as you have to work harder to scan through the buttons to find the one you want.

Currently, the only way to get back the ability to determine how many instances of an application may be open before grouping begins is to edit the Windows registry - the cryptic file that holds configuration settings for Windows and most of the applications that run under it.

Editing the Windows registry is not difficult, but you should be sure that you create a restore point before doing so. A restore point allows you to return to a previous state should something that you do in the registry cause your system to cease functioning properly.

To create a restore point, hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and tap the Pause/Break button. The System dialog box opens. Click System Protection from the list of tasks in the left-hand pane. Click Continue in the User Account Control dialog box that tells you Windows needs your permission to continue. In the resulting System Properties dialog box, click the Create button on the System Restore tab. Type a restore point description, and then click Create.

If you should ever need to revert to a particular restore point, just click the Window Vista Start orb, and type 'restore,' without the quotation marks, and press Enter. Click Continue if prompted, and then follow the wizard to restore your system to a previous point.

Now, to edit the registry so that your taskbar buttons group as you want them to, open the Vista start orb, and type 'regedit,' without the quotation marks. Click Continue if prompted, and Regedit will open. Regedit is similar in navigational structure to Windows Explorer. You'll find entries to the left that can be expanded by clicking the right-pointing arrow to the left of the entry labels.

Locate the HKEY_CURRENT_USER entry in the left-hand pane of Regedit, and click the arrow to the left of the label to expand the branch. Now locate and expand the following branches in succession: Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer, Advanced. Select the Advanced branch to reveal a long list of entries in the right-hand pane of Regedit.

In the right-hand pane, find an empty spot and click your right mouse button. A context-sensitive menu will appear with the word 'New' on it. Click New, and then from the resulting flyout menu, click DWORD (32-bit) Value. A new entry will be created with the label 'New Value #1.' Just delete that label by typing the following: TaskbarGroupSize. Note the capitalisation and lack of spaces in- between words in the label. Press Enter. Your new label is created.

Now double-click the newly-created label. A dialog box will appear called Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value. There will be a Value Data field with the number 0 in it. Remove the 0 and type 2 in the Value Data line.

The '2' means that any time you have two or more identical applications open, their taskbar buttons will be grouped. If you would like grouping to being only if you have 3, 4, or more instances of a program running, type '3,' '4,' or a number of your choice instead. Press the OK button after you've typed your number.

That's all there is to it. The change is automatically saved, and you can close Regedit. Reboot your computer, and from that point on, your taskbar buttons will group when you want them to.

--- Have a computer question? Send it to the Computer Helper at jayd@csi.com.