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When I try to rename one of these Quick access shortcuts,...

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, the original folder name are renamed also.

What I'm looking for is to rename the shortcuts without renaming the original folders names.

OS: Windows 10

This question isn't a duplicate of Windows 10: Rename pinned items in Windows Explorer's Quick Access. This question is asking about how not to rename the original folder with the same name of its Quick Access shortcut on being renamed, while the other question is asking about the existence of the rename feature itself — not its relation with the original folder name.

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Windows does not have the ability to rename Quick Access pinned items, so one needs to rather use the workaround of pinning a symbolic link to the folder.

The procedure is described in the article Rename Quick Access pinned folders in Windows 10 in detail and with screenshots. Here is the bare method :

  1. Unpin from Quick Access the folders you wish to rename.

  2. Create a new empty folder, for example c:\Users\your_name\Pinned Folders.

  3. Open a new Command Prompt (CMD) window and type the following command per each folder to pin:
    mklink /J "%userprofile%\Pinned Folders\New Name" "c:\path\folder to pin"
    (%userprofile% is same as c:\Users\your_name)

  4. Right click the items in %userprofile%\Pinned Folders and pin them to Quick Access.

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    Thanks for this good approach! But for each folder that I need to pin, I do this procedure, this would take a lot of time, also the shortcuts won't be portable to other computers unless the symbolic link is made first.
    – Omar
    Sep 18, 2016 at 14:55
  • You could automate some of the creation of the script to run by using batch commands. You could keep the batch files for later use on other computers.
    – harrymc
    Sep 18, 2016 at 16:57
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    I tried to do this on a network drive and I got an error that "Local NTFS drives are required for this operation". Is there a workaround for networked drives?
    – dykeag
    Jan 21, 2020 at 13:07
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    The network drive issue can be resolved by 1. using /D instead of /J, 2. running in an administrator shell, and 3. using the complete path (rather than %userprofile%). But this still doesn't work for me; the entry in Quick Access is always renamed to its source name regardless of what name I give the link.
    – Marshall Eubanks
    Mar 26, 2021 at 13:33
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    Did exactly this (and also tried just creating the link using Windows Explorer context menu), and then pinned the link as shown - it always resolved immediately to the linked path, and just used the final directory name. In other words, this method didn't work at all for me - it did exactly the same as pinning the original path.
    – RBerman
    Oct 26, 2021 at 14:35

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