Customize the Windows Vista Send To Menu
You've seen the SendTo folder in action any time you right-click a file and select the Send To folder from the context menu. What you might be unaware of is that you can customize the items in this menu.
Go ahead, right click a file. You should see something that looks like this:
To get to the SendTo folder, you'll need to open up an Explorer window, and then paste in the following to the address bar.
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
%APPDATA% is an environment variable that actually maps to something like C:\users\<username>\AppData\Roaming.
You should now see a bunch of shortcuts:
Let's say you wanted to add an item to the Send To menu to open files in Notepad. You could just drag a shortcut to Notepad into this folder, or create a new shortcut. Now you can see the new Notepad item in the menu:
This method should work for any application that allows you to open a file by using a command line argument.
It's a lot easier to do (and remember…) the following:
(1) [WindowKey] + [R] : open the execute box
(2) Shell:sendto : open the sendto folder
Blue,
I wasn't aware of that Shell:sendto trick… thanks for the comment!
THis is a great shortcut but I see a bunch of stuff in my right-click send to then I do when I view this folder. Mostly it includes all my drives that are in use. I really don't want this. I tried installing TweakVI to help, but couldn't find this as a setting in this version. Any ideas?
I guess you stumped everyone, Kimber.
Leave it to Microsoft to make things more confusing. I dropped an Excel program shortcut into my "send to" folder so I could send downloaded, delimited txt files straight to Excel, and …go figure…it does not show up in my "right-click send-to menu".
Thanks Microsoft, you're the best! I wish all consumer products were as reliable as yours!
Well, on a hunch, I decided to create a shortcut from the Excel.exe file which resides in the Office Program directory. Earlier I had just copied the shortcut from the start menu and dropped that one into the "send to" folder. After deleting the first one and using the one created from the actual exe file, guess what?? It works now! Geeez! That was Easy! I bet everyone will figure that out..(yes, I am being sarcastic)
Why would microsoft create a shortcut to excel for the start menu during an office 07 installation that will not work when dropped into the "send to" folder? Why not create a clean shortcut that actually shows the Target as a folder/file location of the excel exe file rather than just showing "Microsoft Office Small Business 2007″? Or, at least assure that copies of that shortcut from the start menu would work everywhere else in their OS. I could SCREAM! This is just another example of the IDIOCY of microsoft's development engineers' thinking.
(..oh, what I would give to go back to the 70's and snag QDOS before Gates ripped it…) It just hit me, the beginning of Microsoft was founded on "Rip & Burn". Gates Ripped off QDOS and Tim Patterson got Burned!
How fitting.
Actually it was PCDOS Mark
Thanks SO MUCH for this information! You folks a great!
Best solution of all: Create an item in the Send To list called "Modify This Menu".
Make it be a batch file that executes "explorer.exe %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo".
You'll never need to remember this crap again.
What is it about Microsoft that every version of Windows becomes more complicated and obfuscated? They seem to think that arbitrary churn is the same thing as "innovation". I had a friend who worked at Microsoft and said it was corporate culture to be rewarded for churn.
Hi Guys!
We've added a shortcut to the SendTo menu only for ourselves now. Now, has anyone done it for every user of the computer? I tried doing the trick in the All Users folder, but there's no AppData\Roaming folder for All Users. Creating the same folder structure doesn't do it.
Greetz,
Bob
Here's a trick for guys who need to sort out files such as pictures. I organize my pics by date (ie. I have a folder named yyyymmdd ) and a subfolder called "_Trash". I need a quick way of sending my files to this folder. So I created a _Trash.cmd batch file in the SendTo folder and the .cmd file looks like this:
move %1 .\_trash
Greetz,
Bob
You can create a shortcut in the Default user path and that will work for new profiles on the machine.
You will need Admin rights so I suggest using the copy technique.
Existing users will have to ba a manual add as far as I can see.
Michael
Built the batch file suggestion for modifying the send to folder. Works Great! Thanks Paul!
Very nice, just what I was looking for!…
@ Blue (et al)
If you're using Vista, you can even drop the Winkey + R.
oops….accidentally hit Enter and off it went prematurely…..anyway…
On Vista, just hit the Windows key and type shell:sendto
Vista's Search box suffices as a command line oftentimes
Another trick that adds some functionality to this little gem…
Follow the steps above to get to the Send To folder, then navigate one folder back. You should be in the Windows folder, and several folders (Including Send To) should appear in the explorer pane.
Right click and drag the Send To folder and select "Create Shortcuts Here" on the context menu when you release the mouse. Now just name that shortcut whatever you wish (I call mine "SendTo - Create Menu Item") and then move it into the Send To folder.
Now, anything you right click and point to the Send To context menu can be directed to this shortcut. Once that's done, that program will appear on the Send To menu from then on. Useful for things like Notepad, or an image viewer, or any other application where you don't want to bugger around with changing the default program a given file type should open with, but you either didn't set a default in the first place, or just want to use a different program now and then.
Cheers
how do you add "new folder" to the send to menu?
Argh!!!!! Thank you, OMG thank you! For 6 months Vista has been frustrating the crap out of me. Send to now just the way I want it.
1. HUGE functionality that seems to be missing now is the ability to create hierarchical SendTo menu items. If I create a folder in the SendTo folder, I cannot add subfolders or shortcuts to that folder to created a nested, organized set of SendTo items. Why did MS remove this functionality? Why?
2. Where is the All Users SendTo? Even when I delete all the default items MS placed into my menu, I need to delete all the stuff it shows for all users (drives, etc.) as well.
I've had Vista for all of ten minutes now, and I'm hating it already. I run OS X at home, and it is a superior OS to this junk.
I don't have the "Send to" comand when I right-click any file… How is that possible? Anyone has any idea on how to recover that?
Linc,
To ad a new folder to the send to menu, from within the send to folder right click and choose: new, shortcut, then use the browse button to browse to the folder you want to add.
sending to SendTo.
send shortcuts to sendTo through sendTo.
to do this you create a shortcut of sendTo in sendTo. shortcut path should be "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo"
I notice the "Send To" Menu shows more items in the list than whats in the folder, like "DVD RW Drive (F:)"
How does one find this if wanting to remove it from the list?
Wow, this has been driving me crazy not knowing how to do the send to. I just figured they took the feature out of Vista… I sure am glad I found this web site. Thanks You! and Google!
Oh NO you have to learn some new things to use your computer! WAAH! Vista sucks, I love my Mac — whatever.
Quit your damn crying (Brian).
I just picked up a the Samsung i760 smart phone earlier last week and finally got it set up so I can send files and music to the phone through the usb cable. I found this page and thought it would be great if I could add a send to link on the right click menu to the phone's memory card. Unfortunately I can't create a shortcut to anything relating to the phone at all. I thought it might be because it's a removable storage device, but if I put the card into my card reader, or insert a jumpdrive, they show up. Anyone know a work around?
nNn- Um, I've been using Windows since 3.11. Perhaps you should stop making assumptions as to what I know and what I need to learn. Vista has issues, especially from the standpoint of usability, performance and efficiency. So many previously-working features are now broken (such as subfolders in the SendoTo), so many unnecessary bells and whistles added that do nothing but slow me down (for example, why do I have to wait 10 seconds for the dialog to pop up to ask if I want to move and replace, move and make a new copy or cancel?).
The last — nay, the only great OS Microsoft managed to put out was Windows 2000. XP was a joke, and Vista isn't looking much better. (And yes, OS X is superior to any flavor of Windows. Hands down.)
So, back to my original question: has anyone figured out how to use subfolders in the SendTo?
Thanks this is useful
Thanks this has been fantastic, but please can someone tell me what I need to put into the Properties of "Mail Recipient" as I think I have that all wrong, thanks so much