Start menu

What is the Start menu:

Down in the bottom left corner is a picture that has the word "start" in it. This is called a button and you can activate buttons for certain functions. This button opens a menu called the "Start Menu". To activate this button on the keyboard, press the Windows key. It is located all the way to the bottom left corner and the second key over to the right. There is another Windows key located two keys from the right of the spacebar. Tapping either one of these keys once will open the start menu and tapping it once again will close it and take you back to the window that you were in first. The start menu is another way where shortcuts could be placed to access them quickly. As you may find, there are many ways to do the same thing on your computer.

Search edit field:

When you press the Windows key to access the Start menu, the first option you will land on, is an edit field that will let you search your whole computer for anything. You can type in the first few letters of the program you are looking for and it will usually pop up and say the name. You then can just press enter to open that program, file, or menu. If the item you are looking for did not speak, you can arrow down a list of choices that the computer found that has those letters in it. You can enter on any of them if it is what you need. The computer will first show you options from the internet, then from the system settings, then folders, and then document titles. So, you may need to arrow down aways to get to what you are trying to find. Remember, you can just press the Windows key or even the escape key to close the Start menu.

Submenus:

Depending on how your computer is set up, the start menu may introduce you to a concept of submenus. This means that you can look at more titles that are stored under that title. It is like lifting the lid of a box that is in another box. When you encounter these submenus, you will hear the word submenu after the title. The way to open these submenus is to right arrow one time. If you want to close the box and go back to the previous menu, press the left arrow. Sometimes, you will right arrow several times to get into a deeper menu. You will need to press the left arrow for each time you press the right arrow to return to each level visited.

This is the end of this lesson.

The next area of the desktop we would like for you to know is the Taskbar. If you are ready, press enter on the link below to begin that lesson. Taskbar

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