Windows 7 Action Center is a great way to manage your tasks and notifications. You can create custom actions, or add them from the Windows 7 taskbar. Here are some tips on how to use Action Center in Windows 7:

  1. Create Custom Actions: To create a custom action, open the Action Center and click on the New button. Type a name for your action and click on the Add button.
  2. Add From the Taskbar: To add an action from the taskbar, open the Action Center and click on the New button. Type a name for your action and click on the Add button.
  3. Customize Your Action: You can customize your action by editing its properties. To do this, open the Action Center and click on the Edit button. In the Properties window, you can change how your action works, how it is displayed, and whether it is enabled or disabled.

New in Windows 7 is the Action Center which is an activity center that allows you to control system notifications.  This is definitely an improvement to previous versions so you can control the amount of annoying messages the OS pops up from the taskbar.  To get to Action Center select it from Control Panel or simply type “action center” (no quotes) into the search box in the Start Menu.

By default the Action Center notification icon will be displayed in the taskbar and display messages about security and maintenance settings.

While in Action Center you can view which settings are enabled or not and change them by clicking the different hyperlinks.

Click on Change Action Center settings to turn messages on or off.

 

If you are an experienced user and don’t care to see the Action Center icon in the taskbar at all, here is how we disable it.  Click on Start and go to Control Panel.

Now in Control Panel select All Control Panel Items and then click on System Icons.

The Turn system icons on or off window will open and here you change Action Center to Off.  Notice you can also turn other system icons on or off as well.

Also if you click on Customize notification icons in the screen above you can select the behavior of other tray notifications individually.

If you are new to computers to Windows 7 you might not want to disable the Action Center entirely until you get a better feel for it.  With these tips you can definitely control the amount of notifications that pop up.