Pin *.lnk file to Windows 7 Taskbar using C#

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Even the programmatic pinning of icons in Windows 7 seems it's not permitted (like it says here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378460(v=VS.85).aspx), there are some methods for doing this by using some VB scripts. Someone found a way of doing this in C# like this:

private static void PinUnpinTaskBar(string filePath, bool pin)
{
     if (!File.Exists(filePath)) throw new FileNotFoundException(filePath);

     // create the shell application object
     dynamic shellApplication = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Shell.Application"));

     string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(filePath);
     string fileName = Path.GetFileName(filePath);

     dynamic directory = shellApplication.NameSpace(path);
     dynamic link = directory.ParseName(fileName);

     dynamic verbs = link.Verbs();
     for (int i = 0; i < verbs.Count(); i++)
        {
            dynamic verb = verbs.Item(i);
            string verbName = verb.Name.Replace(@"&", string.Empty).ToLower();

            if ((pin && verbName.Equals("pin to taskbar")) || (!pin && verbName.Equals("unpin from taskbar")))
            {

                verb.DoIt();
            }
        }

        shellApplication = null;
}

As can be seen, the code makes use of .NET Framework 4.0 features. The question I want to ask is: can this function be transformed so it would make the same thing, but using just 3.5 Framework? Any ideas?

taskbar windows-7 c#
4 Answers

Update for UWP apps running on Windows 10 with the Fall Creators Update (Build 16299 or higher):

You can programmatically pin your own app to the taskbar, just like you can pin your app to the Start menu. And you can check whether your app is currently pinned, and whether the taskbar allows pinning.

You can access the TaskbarManager API directly, as described in MS docs.

I wanted to do this with a WinForms application, but it does not seem like it is going to work because I cannot reference the Windows.Foundation APIs.

user_68178210
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