Shrotcut file

A shortcut is like a link on a webpage. It is merely a document that says "you should look in location 'X' for the file"

So basically you cannot open a shortcut, you click on the shortcut, and then it opens that file that the shortcut is linked to. If the file that the shortcut is linked to is gone (like it was on a drive that no longer exists, or was removed from the system) then you will get an error message