Computer and Web Articles

Question: You had a column item some time ago where you talked about dragging the desktop icons to the recycle bin, and you talked about the icons having the small, black arrow. But some have an arrow and some don’t. What’s the difference?

Answer: Icons without arrows are usually not shortcuts. Instead, they actually represent the program or file itself - if you delete these icons, you delete the programs or files.

For example, let’s say you save a Word document to your desktop. The icon representing your document won’t have an arrow on it, and if you delete it, you delete the Word doc itself.

Only when you see the little black arrows on the bottom left of an icon can you be sure that it represents a shortcut to (an alternative way to jump to) a file or program. These are always safe to delete so feel free to go right ahead and do so if you’re not clicking on them regularly.