How to Disable or Remove ” – Shortcut” Suffix Text When Creating Shortcuts

In Windows 7 or Windows Vista, whenever user creates a shortcut for a file or folder, the newly created shortcut by attaching a small arrow to the icon, and have the new shortcut name been placed or appended with a text of ” – Shortcut” suffix to the end of the original file or folder name.

For example, creating a shortcut (by right clicking of the file and select “Create shortcut” or copy the file and “Paste shortcut”) of “My Digital Life.html” file will have a new shortcut pointing to “My Digital Life.html” original file, but the shortcut will be named as “My Digital Life – Shortcut.lnk” instead.

Users who prefer the created shortcut to have the exact same name with the original object, without the – Shortcut suffix been appended or added to the end of the original file name or folder name can use the following registry trick to disable and turn off automatic appending or adding of ” – Shortcut” suffix to the end of shortcut name.

1. Run Registry Editor (RegEdit).
2. Navigate to the following registry key:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

3. In the right pane, double click on link registry value.
4. Change the “link” binary value data to 00 00 00 00.

   

5. Restart the computer.

With the trick, the suffix ” – Shortcut” will disappear and no longer append to the shortcut name when created. However, it does not change the existing shortcut names. Note the the trick also works to remove “Shortcut To” prefix which is used to label to shortcut created in Windows XP or older Windows operating system.

Alternatively, copy and paste the following text to a text editor, save it as a file name with .reg extension, and run the file to merge the value to system registry, or just download remove-shortcut-suffix-prefix.reg.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] "link"=hex:00,00,00,00