It Does Compute

Here is a quick way to add things to the “Send To” right click menu in Windows XP.

First let’s explain how this might be helpful.

Have you ever wanted to open a file that Windows didn’t know how to open? For instance, a text file that had a weird extension like .out or .dat. You could open it with Wordpad or Notepad, but Windows doesn’t recognize the extension so instead you have to double click on the file and choose what program to open it with. This can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes it can take you longer to open the file than to read the contents.

How about if you could just right click on the file and send it to Wordpad or Notepad? This works great for file types that your Windows XP OS doesn’t know about. For instance, I have a program that creates log files with a .output extension. I know they are text files, and if want to quickly look at them, I can just right click and send them to Wordpad. The file opens up normally and if I want to make edits or changes, I can do that too.

Would you like to easily put files in a folder that you frequent often? Right clicking the files and doing a “Send To”, instead of doing a copy and paste can save us some time.

Want something on the Desktop, why not send it there?

Customize the “Send To” menu is easy and can help make us a little more efficient.

To customize the “Send To” menu:

1. Click on the Start button, then on Run.
2. Type sendto in the box, and click OK.

The resulting folder that appears is where you add and remove items as you see fit. Try adding a shortcut to Notepad, Wordpad, or another of your favorite text editors. Also try adding a shortcut to a folder you copy things to a lot.

What other useful additions to the “Send To” menu have you found?