Start any program from Run Prompt

In this blog post we are going to see how to open any program or application from Windows Run Command Prompt.

By default you can open many programs for Windows command prompt eg. Notepad, WordPad, Microsoft Word, Outlook. But the problem with the default functionality is that you need to know the exact exe name to open the application i.e for opening PowerPoint you need to type POWERPNT but consider you need to open PowerPoint when you type PPT, it can’t be done by default.

Also there is another problem, for some programs you need to add the exe location to the PATH environment variable, if not added during the application installation. I by default prefer using application zip package instead of the installation file so every time I need to add the exe location to my path variable which increased its description too long.

 Now lets get to the point how can we access any programs, its simple follow the steps below.

1) Create a new folder in your windows locations. Here my folder is created at C:\users\kumar\Shortcuts make a note of this path.

2) Right Click My Computer (Right click) --> Properties --> Advanced system settings (Tab) --> Open the System Properties pop settings box.

3) Navigate to Advanced (tab) --> Click Environment Variables.

4) Select PATHEXT in System Variable section and click Edit and add ;.LNK in Variable Value section at the last as show in the image below.

5) Now select System Variable Path and click Edit and at the last add ;C:\users\kumar\Shortcuts (path where you created the new folder) at the last. Click OK and in Environment Variables tab and Click on Ok in System Properties. 

6) Now right click any .exe file and select Create Shortcut. Once the shortcut is created cut it from that location and paste in our new folder, and rename as your want it. This is the name that you will be calling from the Run prompt or CMD line prompt.

That's it now you will be able to open any application directly from the Run prompt with your custom names. You can even create shortcuts of folder and paste it here and open from Run prompt.

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