How to Remove "Shortcut" Text From New Shortcuts in Windows 7 or Vista?

A source of annoyance for many Windows users is the ” – Shortcut” text that is added to the name of newly created shortcuts, and every time you have to manually edit the shortcut and remove that text. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a registry hack for this?
Most long-time geeks will remember that there was a hack for Windows XP, and probably already know that the same hack works in Windows 7 or Vista as well.

Notice the ” – Shortcut” added to my pidgin icon.



Manual Registry Hack
Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

On the right-hand side you’ll find a key that is just called “link”, with a default value of 1e 00 00 00. Open this key up and change the 1e to 00 instead, leaving you with 00 00 00 00.
You’ll have to log off and then back on to make this change take effect. Please note that this won’t affect existing shortcuts, only shortcuts that you create from now on.
To change the setting back, just change back to the 1e value, log off and back on.
Downloadable Registry Hack
I’ve provided these tweaks in a couple of registry hack files.

• RemoveShortcutText.reg – Removes the shortcut text from new shortcut
• RestoreShortcutText.reg – Restores the setting back to the default
• Download file from here