Personalize the Windows Explorer Navigation

Bar
Lincoln Spector Nov 27, 2014

Windows Explorer (AKA File Explorer) offers a Navigation Bar on the left to help you select folders. Mary Hall asked

how to customize it.

The Explorer Navigation Bar provides a map to the drives and folders on or accessible to
your computer. Two of the sections, Favorites and Libraries, are easily configurable. The other
sections are not configurable for a good reason. If you want to add a drive to the Navigation
Bar, you need to add that drive from your PC (which adds it to the Navigation Bar
automatically).
A quick note on the name: Microsoft has called its file manager Windows Explorer since
Windows 95. With Windows 8, they renamed it File Explorer—a good change in my opinion. For
this article, I’ll just call it Explorer.
The very name Favorites suggests that the top section of the Navigation Bar should be
configurable. After all, you want your favorites, not Microsoft’s. Here’s how to change that:
 To remove a folder from Favorites, right-click it in the Navigation Bar and
select Remove. This doesn’t delete the folder; it just removes it from Favorites.
 To add a folder to Favorites, drag the folder to the Favorites section.
 To change the order of your Favorites, drag and drop.
Things get more complicated in the Libraries section. Libraries provide a way to group
your data files into categories such as Documents and Pictures. Windows 7 users will find
Libraries right below Favorites.
But if you’re using Windows 8, you won’t find it at all until you’ve changed a setting. In
File Explorer, click the View tab. Click the Navigation pane pull-down menu at the left edge of
the ribbon, and select Show libraries.
 The Libraries section will appear between the This PC and Network sections.
To add other folders to an existing library, right-click the folder and select Include in
libraryand your desired library. This won’t work for folders already in a library.

To remove a folder from a library, right-click the folder in the Library section of the
navigation pane and select Remove location from library.
 To create a library, click Libraries in the Navigation Bar. In Windows 7, click New libraryin
the toolbar near the top of the window. In Windows 8, click the Home tab, then selectNew
item>Library.

In either version, give the new library a name. You can then add folders as explained
previously.
To delete a library, right-click it in the navigation pane and select Delete.