Click on the Start Button, then left click the program that you want to work with. From the new resulting drop down menu you will see the following choices amongst others:

Pin to Task Bar
Pin to Start Menu

I like to keep my desktop as free of icons as possible, so I like to put my most used programs on the Task Bar.

To ‘Pin’ anything to the Task Bar, you must first make sure that it is ‘unlocked’. To do this, right click the task bar and make sure that the task bar is ‘unlocked’. If it says ‘task bar locked’, then left click it once and it was become unlocked.

By clicking ‘Pin to Task Bar’ the application sends a copy of itself to the Task Bar. Now instead of clicking Start>All programs>Program folder>program you can just single click the icon on the task bar.

If you have any questions about Windows 7, or any technology questions, please feel free to post it here and I will do the best I can to answer it.