LeeTutor's Doing Windows
Windows Tips Categories
Context Menu Tips
CONFIGURING THE SEND TO MENU
Do you know about the "Send To" menu? If you're
in the Windows Explorer or My Computer and you
right-click on a file icon, up pops a context menu one of
whose items is "Send To..." Select that, and
you're likely to at least have a choice for your floppy
drive on the menu. So that is one way of copying a file,
for example. But there are a number of other things that
can be put on the Send To menu. You could put the Recycle
Bin on it, which thus provides a way of deleting (or
rather, recycling) a file when you can't see the normal
Recycle Bin icon on your desktop. You could put an icon
for your printer on the menu and thus have a way to print
any ASCII document file that you select immediately. This
is much faster than bringing up NotePad and then
selecting Print from the File menu. Other possible
destinations include: your fax device, any folders you
use most often, the built-in file viewer called
QUICKVIEW.EXE in your \Windows\System\Viewers directory,
and the PKUNZIP.EXE utility. But how do you add to the
Send To menu?
Let's take as an example the last possibility mentioned
above, namely your unZIPping utility, PKUNZIP.EXE. First,
go to the Windows Explorer and find the directory where
you have the PKUNZIP.EXE file. Make sure this shows on
the right panel of the Explorer screen. Now, on the left
panel, scroll to your Windows directory. Click on the
"+" sign next to the folder icon, in order to
expand the list of subdirectories of Windows. One of
these will be a subdirectory called "Send To".
(If you're using Windows Millenium Edition, and you have
not selected the option to Show hidden files and folders,
you may not see this folder listed, since it was made
hidden in WinME. You would need to start up Windows
Explorer, click on the Tools menu, choose Folder options,
click on the View tab, then put a dot next to Show hidden
files and folders and click OK.)
Now, right drag PKUNZIP.EXE from the right panel over to
the Send To folder. When you release the right button,
one of the items will read "Create Shortcut(s)
Here". Select that. By this means you have added
your file unZIPper to the Send To menu. You can click
once on the name of the new shortcut in the Send To
folder (which will probably be something like
"Shortcut to PKUNZIP.EXE"), hit the F2 function
key to bring up the Rename function, and then change the
name to something else, such as PkUnZip. In a similar way
you can add any device, folder, or program which can take
one argument specifying its input to the Send To menu.
Two other examples of the latter that I have put on my
Send To menu are NotePad and WordPad. To add a printer to
your Send To menu, create the shortcut from your printer
in the Printers folder of My Computer.