Windows Vista - Explorer - Modify the SendTo Menu

SUMMARY: Add the ability to right-click on a file and send it to a text editor, a word processor, or other application.

When you right-click on a file or folder, a "Send To" menu appears, allowing you to create a Desktop shortcut, compress files, send files as attachments, and more.

In previous versions of Microsoft Windows, it was easy to modify this list of items. Simply creating a shortcut in the user's "SendTo" folder, directly underneath the "Documents and Settings" folder, did the trick. Windows Vista, however, places this folder in a different location.

Either Navigate to the following folder in Explorer:

C:\Users\ [YOUR_USERNAME] \ AppData \ Roaming \Microsoft \Windows \SendTo

(Replace YOUR_USERNAME with your Windows username.)

Or, click the "Start" button, type "shell:sendto" (without quotes) and press Enter.

If desired, you can click on an item and hit the "Delete"/ "Del" key to remove it. Note that it is not recommended to try removing shortcuts to "Compressed (zipped) Folder", "Desktop (create shortcut)", "Documents", or "Mail Recipient" as these shortcuts can be harder to recreate.

To create a new SendTo item, right-click inside the folder and choose "New" - "Shortcut", and follow the onscreen prompts to create a shortcut to an application that you would like to see in the "SendTo" menu.

For example, in the above screenshots, note the "Notepad" option in the SendTo folder. This is an option that does not come built into Windows Vista, but one I find very useful.

1. Right-click inside the SendTo folder and choose "New" - "Shortcut".

2. The "Create Shortcut" dialog box appears. Enter notepad and press "Next".

3. For the shortcut name, enter Notepad and press "Finish".

Now, you can more easily view web pages, configuration files, log files, and other text-based files in Notepad.