I have a bunch of shortcuts on my desktop for various programmes I've installed on the computer.
Some of them I can just drag to the trash no problem, but some of them when I drag them to the trash seem to ask me whether I want to delete the whole programme, rather than just the shortcut.
How can I stop this happening and just delete the shortcut?
See screenshots below detailing the shortcut and the popup I'm getting asking me to delete the programme. (although this is shown with Teamviewer as the example programme it happens with various others too.)
I have Windows 10.
Best Answer
Deleting a shortcut never deletes the application associated with that shortcut. If you look closely at the wording of your second screen shot, you'll notice it's asking
Confusingly the location mentioned in the dialog is the folder name that contains the shortcut's target. You can confirm this by inspecting the shortcut's properties and observe that this folder name is present in the path of the shortcut's target. Neither this folder nor its target file are deleted when the shortcut is removed.
The reason it requires administrative permissions is because the shortcut is located in the Public Desktop folder which is shared by all users of the computer. Due to that folder's permissions you must have admin rights to modify its contents. This prevents non-admin users from making changes that would affect other users of the computer.