How-To Geek
Stupid Geek Tricks: Secret Items on the Windows 7 Send To Menu
While poking around in Windows 7, I discovered extra context menu items using the same Shift + Right-click trick we used to open a command prompt from the desktop menu, and we’ve got big colorful screenshots to show you today.
Viewing the Secret Items
These are the default items that you should see on the Send To menu when you right-click on a file:
Hold down the Shift key while right-clicking on the icon, and then try the Send To menu… all sorts of extra options!
If you want any of those to show up normally without holding down the Shift key, you can create shortcuts in the Send To folder. Just type the following into the location bar:
shell:sendto
And then drag shortcuts to your preferred folders into this folder.
I’ve found that using custom shortcuts in the Send To menu can be very handy… I use them to upload images to the HTG web server on a daily basis.
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Comments (45)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 01/28/09
A friend of mine taught me a cool trick of creating a shortcut to the sendo folder in the sendto folder. This way you can send shortcuts on the desktop or anywhere else to the sendto folder without having to open the sendto folder. I use this for adding application shortcuts so I can send files to portable applications.
is there a way to do this on winxp?
How do you use Send To to send files to the server?
@Bioinfo_mgr: Yes. You would put the items in the sendto folder in your profile in windows xp. The path is :\Documents and Settings\\SendTo. The folder is hidden, so you need to have the “do not show hidden files and folders” option turned off in windows befor you could see it.
@Radu: It would depend on your connection to the web server. If it is on your local network, you can use the UNC Path. There are also tools which allow you to map remote servers, making an FTP or HTTP server appear to Windows as a Windows folder.
Good Luck!!!
Wups My paths in the comment above are missing stuff, as I used the GT and LT signs, so they got rendered. it should be [system drive]:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\SendTo
Been running 7 on an old box that has been collecting dust for over a year.
Runs great, and thanks to HTG, I’m learning all kinds of neat tricks.
Thanks!
Thanks a lot! I was wondering how to get rid of a shortcut on my send to menu and now i know. :)
Is it possible to get Open folder location in XP? That would be helpful !
You can easily open any of the folders under your user profile by typing the folder name into the
RUN dialog:
sendto = %userprofile%\sendto
favorites = %userprofile%\favorites
%temp% = %userprofile%\local settings\temp
any folder in you system path can be opened from the run dialog:
temp = %windir%\temp
system32 %windir%\system32
What about the “New” ggroup, could I add any more options there??
I’m using windows 7 now, on my old upgraded laptop en it works as a charm! it’s like windows xp but better;) by windows update I got my own language so it”:d” downloaded here;http://btjunkie.org/torrent/MICROSOFT-WINDOWS-7-ULTIMATE-7600-16385-RTM-X86-RETAIL-ENGLISH-DVD-ZUKO/4358815e86d150c5eb407491dbd1733344bf819fc8b3 as the comments say; activated it using 7loader by hazar!!! I like this so that we’re gonna buy it on the other pc
is there a way to do this in vista?
Is there a list od shell commands for windows?
has anyone else had the following problem with win7.
After putting my win7 computer..win7 home premium into sleep mode…. press enter key…to take out of sleep, and have a random program on your computer start up.
This has happened to me three times since i installed win7.
al
I just found out about the “copy as path” item in Windows 7 context menu when holding shift on a file/folder. This tip has saved me loads of time when trying upload/open files.
i want to hide my personal images .is there any way without using any hide folder s/w of doing this ? i do use windows 7.
In xp you could be in a folder and use send to to send s file to wordpad or any other program link in the sendto directory. Is there a way to do the same thing in windows 7, i.e. right click a file and send it to and editor or program of choice? Send to seems to only allow you to send whole folders in windows 7. Windows 7 send to seems to be less functional.
Tim wouldn’t you use “open with” and choose notepad or wordpad instead of send to ??
You’d need to make sure the box wasn’t ticked for “always use this program to open this file type” though. (words to that effect)
wo0o0o ..!!
prefecto.. Muchas Gracias.
Oo0h My God..Great.. A lot of Thanks
The “send to” addon that was available in windows XP was much better. I could select a set of files, use send to and it ad not only a list of place to send it but it gave you the option to browse anywhere to find a location to sent to. It also gave you the option to move or copy the files. The windows 7 “send to” will not let me send to a directory on the C drive and it seems to only move the files! I liked to old “send to” better.
This is cool. I have been using windows 7 ultimate for almost 3 months now…cudnt find it though. Are there any more???
I also find the Send-to in win7 to be inferior to the function in WinXP!!!
I used to have loads of shortcuts in there to all kinds of folders; colleagues personal folders, FTP-server folders, etc, etc… I was able to just put new folders in the Send-To folder and then group all my shortcuts in those… i.e. I had a folder “Colleagues” which held all the shortcuts to my colleague’s personal folders.
Simply hovering over these folders in “Send To” in XP, would open them and then all I had to do was drop the selection of files I wanted to copy there onto the shortcut of the colleague of choice and the files would be COPIED there… not MOVED…
In win7, the folders show up in the list, but hovering over them doesn’t open them anymore :(
If there’s a way to get this functionality BACK, by hacking the registry for all I care, someone PLEASE tell me!
I really liked this trick and it gave me an idea. I tried using Shift + Right-click on the desktop and found that it added “Open command window here” to the menu options! I found it also works w/ any open windows explorer window too.
So this is a great tool but it ‘COPIES’ the file, it doesn’t SEND/MOVE the file. Is there a way to do this?
This is useless to me since it just copy and pastes the file. I want to MOVE it.
Wonderful and THANKS!
OK
Where, on Win 7, is the file with the options that appear on the “Send to” menu which appears when I hold the ‘Shift’ key down?
…I have partitioned my drive and prefer to “Send to” files in directories that are not on this computer’s C” drive. In this manner, should my continuous messing around… LOL… in the registry result in having to reinstall “C” …then I shall not lose all this work that is stored on the drives that I have partitioned off of “C”.
Love your work, here:)
@Nick
Hold down the shift key while you click your selected “Send To” folder and that should move instead of copy it to your desired location.
HTH
Brilliant :)
Thanks
very cool trick
thanks
REDCRASH
I love this as i am able to create a shortcut (you have to create one with the full file location e.g. “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE”) in the send to folder, and can now open excel files in their own app (window) this is great for dual displays.
I like to add a shortcut to Note Pad in the Sendto folder. I always did this in Win XP but couldn’t find it in Windows 7. Your tip: Typing “Shell:SendTo” into the Location Menu finds it.
Thanks How-To Geek
You can always browse to this folder. Remember to make hidden folders visible, or copy -> paste path with changed user name
X:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
Great, thanks! I’ve been looking for the ‘open a command prompt window here’ for some time, but ended up just pasting cmd.exe in a couple folders (desktop, mydocs, etc). From there i’d cd to the right folder. Awesome that Win7 has this feature, only imo they could have put it in the standard rightclick menu. But I guess I’m not such a basic user and most ppl would only think it’s taking unnecesary space :-)
Is it possible to make send to > custom file?
For example send to C:\ or send to D:\Documents?
There’s more than the above mentioned..
X:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
..directory!? I have WinRAR installed on my Windows 7 / 64bit version here and although I do see a lot of sendto-shortcuts in the dir above, the WinRAR ones don’t show up there!
(Due to the sh*tty search function of Win7, you can’t search for other “sendto” directories, either.. -BTW: If someone knows of a true clone of the XP-style file-based search-engine, I’ll glad to hear; I really liked to just do a right-click on a directory, type in the searched file name and have the PC scan downwards from there on.. *sigh*)
Scanning the registry doesn’t show up with the text strings of WinRar, so I’m stuck.. :-(
gr8
At least I found a cure for the strange sendto-thing: Uninstalling WinRAR64 deleted all of them.
And, BTW: I also found a nifty freeware tool to get my good-old-XP-style “search-this-folder” function back again: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html
(Just in case someone hates Win7′s “I am soooo clever” built-in search as much as I do…)
SendTo was easy in XP. But you know Microsoft…If it works, break it!
@Al (November 2009) wrote: “press enter key…to take out of sleep, and have a random program on your computer start up”
Yes that will be what you told it to do, by pressing Enter it activates wherever the focus happens to be.
Instead, just press the Shift key which wakes it up but does nothing else.
Great share !!
Thanks. :)))
Is there a way to get the Shift + right click to be the default right click without having to press shift all the time?
can you tell me how to hide or remove a link of (map network drive ) from the send to menu without disconnect the map drive?
thank you in advance
Just download sendtotoys.exe something MS should have made available a looooooooonnnnnngggggg time ago
I have been doing this for years using comcast.net. I can see where you’re taking me with this “trick”. However, when I want to send it to a mail recipient, I can only send it through windows live mail. Can anyone show me how to make gmail my preferred email client? Thanks for any help you offer. Larry G.
Nice Trick.