Send to: an overlooked Windows function
It’s been part of Windows for years and may be old hat to some but the “Send to” function in the right-click context menu doesn’t get the use that it ought to. It’s a way to add functionality for any file or folder. Over the years, I have written about it more than once but I come back to it periodically because I think it is worth reminding people about it.
One thing it can do is to make your favorite folders more easily accessible. I have written elsewhere
A way to make your favorite folders readily accessible as a destination from almost anywhere is to add them to the Send To function of the right-click context menu. Then any time you wish to copy a file to your folders, they are right at hand. Placing a folder in the “Send To” menu is simply a matter of adding a shortcut from the desired folder into the SendTo folder (Note that the folder name is written as a single word.) The “SendTo” folder is located in \Documents and Settings\{current user}\. An easy way to open this folder is to enter “sendto” into Start-Run. A shortcut from your desired folder can then be dragged and dropped into the “SendTo” folder.
“Send to” also provides a way to use a program to open (or try to open) any file of your choice regardless of file associations. For example, I often like to use Notepad as a safe way to check out the contents of suspicious files. Notepad is normally associated only with text files with extension TXT but it can be added to the “Send to” menu and used to look at any file. Although many binary files are not good candidates for Notepad, I can still get information about a wide variety of different files. I also put a hex editor in “Send to” just for looking at binary files.
Any program can be added to the “Send to” menu by using a shortcut to its executable in the same way as outlined for folders in the quoted material above. For example, Notepad is added to the menu by finding the executable file “notepad.exe” and placing a shortcut to it in the “Sendto” folder. (The folder name is written as one word.)
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.