How to Turn Off Taskbar Grouping in Windows XP

One of the worst interface decisions Microsoft ever came up with was the "grouping" idea, which is turned on by default in every installation of Windows XP.

Grouping, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is what Windows does when you open a number of web pages or Word documents at once. Once XP runs out of room in the taskbar, it starts stacking the documents all under one tab. So in the case of the screenshot above, instead of having eight tabs representing the eight Internet Explorer windows I have open, XP sticks them all under a single tab which I have to expand by clicking on it. (It doesn't have to be eight windows, mind you. XP will group as few as two windows together if you run out of room.)

Now I'm sure someone out there finds this feature useful but for me it just means extra clicks. I greatly prefer the old way, where the width of those tabs would slowly decrease to accommodate up to 20 or so items in the taskbar, which is useful when I open dozens of windows at a time during link validity checks and other maintenance.

Fortunately, grouping is painlessly easy to turn off, yet Microsoft doesn't make it terribly easy to find. Here's how: Right-click on the taskbar, anywhere in the blue area where there's not currently a tab. Select Properties. In this simple menu remove the check from "Group similar taskbar buttons." That's it!

While you're here, you might also do general taskbar maintenance. I generally keep checks on "Keep the taskbar on top of other windows" and "Show Quick Launch." I also check the two options at the bottom: "Show the clock" and "Hide inactive icons." If your system tray (the area next to the clock) is overrun, click the "Customize..." button and you can manually hide the icons you don't really care about (like the animated mouse icon, Dell QuickSet, or that annoying QuickTime icon).