TASKBAR ISSUE

I had 18 icon shortcuts on the taskbar at lower L corner of screen and sudddenly there were only 4 or 5 for the rest had suddenly moved to the screen. I do not know why this happened but I am trying to restore it somehow. Restart did not change it so I moved all zi could to desktop and now tryng to put them back on the taskbar again. What could have caused this?

 

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I had 18 icon shortcuts on the taskbar at lower L corner of screen and sudddenly there were only 4 or 5 for the rest had suddenly moved to the screen. I do not know why this happened but I am trying to restore it somehow. Restart did not change it so I moved all I could to desktop and now tryng to put them back on the taskbar again. What could have caused this?
What is best way to get these back on the taskbar?

 

All of a sudden it seems many taskbar shortcutshave suddenly been grouped under Google Chrome. It puts a Google Chrome icon on the taskbar then if clicked it lists a number of choices. What has happened?
Now most of my convenient taskbar shortcuts do not work anymore. Instead it opens up a DuckDuckGo search page. Is this fixable?

 

I used to just drag and drop icon to taskbar to make a shortcut but now it groups them under a google chrome browser icon instead of individually naming them. Would like to have it like before.

 

Maybe so. It all of a sudden just happened. I had many icon shortcuts on taskbar and they suddenly went to a blank taskbar. I tried putting them back on but they were not the same anymore. They were spaced farther apart and there was one that said chrome and if I clicked it it showed a list of 5 or 6 choices to choose from instead of a single shortcut. Never experienced this before and trying to figure it out. Understand how to work with new arrangement.

 

Now I guess I will have to keep the shortcuts on the desktop, either separately or in a folder. They were really handy on the taskbar though. This is a windows 7 laptop DELL INSPIRON M5040. I am not sure if upgrading would sove this. I have never before upgraded a computer to a later OS. Scared to try. It was suggested to upgrade to Windows 10. My wife has a windows 10.

 

So I guess I will just "live with it".

 

I decided I may as well just put the shortcuts on the desktop. Since I cannot seem to have individual ones on the taskbar anymore.

 

I guess I would not be able to upgrade ANYWAY, and Iam certainly not ready to buy a new computer.

 

I discovered if I drag and drop the Google Chrome shortcut to the taskbar and right click the icon then it shows a list of the shortcuts. So I can pin the other previous shortcuts to google and get them off the desktop. I have a habit of saving everything in desktop folders until there are around 100 desktop folders I was not finished with and then I put them all in a Desktop Folders folder with current date. I would like to unclutter the desktop.
I tried to pin Accuweather shortcut to chrome and got this: (see uploaded file). How do I fix this? Just trying to get my previous shortcuts back onto the taskbar.