[How To] Rename Favorites In Windows 7 Navigation Pane

Favorites in Windows 7 navigation pane

Earlier this month, we had covered in an article about how to remove “Favorites” from the Navigation pane in Windows 7. Sometimes you don’t want to remove them completely, all you want is to customize them by renaming “Favorites”. Fortunately, this can be done with simple tweaks in Windows 7. Let’s get started on how you can rename “Favorites” in the Windows 7 explorer.

Steps:

1. Type regedit in the Start menu search bar and open “regedit.exe”. Click Yes when prompted by the UAC.

regedit result from programs

2. Navigate to the following path in the Registry Editor:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}

3. Right-click on {323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E} folder and choose “Permissions…

permissions for folder in regedit

4. Click on the Advanced button in the Permissions window. It will now open another dialogue box.

renaming favorites using registry edits

5. Go the Owner tab in the dialogue box. Select your Administrator account. Click OK to save the changes.

renaming favorites using registry edits

6. In the Permissions window, select your username from the list and check against Allow button right next to “Full Control” option. Click OK button to close the window.

permissions for key in regedit for favorites renaming

6. On the left hand side pane, double click on the “LocalizedString” registry key.

renaming favorites through registry edits

7. Type the new name which you want to set for Favorites in the Value data field, thus changing it from the default value @%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21796

default string value

new string value in renaming favorites

You can give it any name that you wish, be it “PC Locations”, “Personal Favs”, “Important Folders”..etc., whatever .

8. Click OK to save the settings. Close the Registry Editor. Restart the Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) process to see the change.

Favorites renamed successfully

You can see how “Favorites “being renamed to “My Locations” in Windows 7 explorer’s Navigation pane in the above screenshot.

To set the back the defaults, just go to step 7 and change the Value data field to the default value “@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21796”.

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