How can I pin a .txt file to the taskbar in Windows 7?

Solution 1:

If you drag it to the taskbar it won't be pinned to the taskbar. It will however be pinned to the Jump list for the text editor you've chosen.

Example: Let's say you use Notepad as default editor. When you drag test.txt to your taskbar it will pin Notepad to your taskbar. It will also pin test.txt to Notepad's Jump List. To open the file you right click on the Notepad icon and select the pinned file from the Jump List.

Solution 2:

There's a way to pin directly to the task bar.

1. Right click on your text file, and click 'Create Shortcut'
2. Open up the shortcut's properties and prepend 'notepad' to the target
   Ex. "C:\MyFile.txt" becomes "notepad C:\MyFile.txt"
3. Pin the shortcut to the task bar.

This is a slight modification of the method for pinning a folder to the task bar as described here.

Solution 3:

Not ideal, but a solution I came up with is:

Create a folder, anywhere - call it something short.

Create a shortcut to your files in it.

Right click the taskbar and click Toolbars > New toolbar

Locate and select the folder.

You should now see the folder on the taskbar with your item, ready to click.

As you said, You can just pin it - as to why it is empty, it sounds like a bug as I do not get this. Perhaps you should try opening the file, adding something like a space to the start, saving then removing the space and saving again. This should make it appear in the recent list. Right click and do properties to make sure that it is the correct object (date/time) and then pin it as it should be the correct version.

Solution 4:

What I've done is enable the "Links" toolbar, and I placed shortcuts inside that toolbar.