Adding Folders and Programs to the ‘Send To’ Context Menu in Windows Vista

Special thanks to Andre De Costa’s Teching It Easy blog for this useful information.

I do not know why the developers at Microsoft felt the need to move already somewhat obscure and hidden features to even more obscure locations in Windows Vista. Maybe they figure that it’s helpful to techs to slow them down to stretch out their billable hours or build-in even more job security for system admins by making things more and more difficult for average users.

Under the Windows 9x family, to add programs or folders to the “Send To” context menu, you just plunked a shortcut into “C:\WINDOWS\Send To“.

This was far too easy, and the average user had no problem customizing Windows the way they wanted. When Windows 2000 (followed by XP and 2003) came along and moved user preferences to the “C:\Documents and Settings” folder, I thought that was a good idea. After all, the Windows folder gets very full, and the average user could cause him or herself problems by deleting the wrong thing. Thus, the Send To folder was moved to “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Send To“. This was still pretty easy and intuitive for anyone who actually wanted to use this handy feature.

Along comes Windows Vista. The familiar “Documents and Settings” folder structure has been replaced by a shortcut (with more shortcuts from there). Security has been tightened to the point that a user with standard user permissions probably can’t even make changes to his or her own settings without a lots of frustration (I haven’t tried, because standard user permissions are SO limited as to make Vista barely usable for anyone who has even moderate experience with Windows.).

So how does one edit the Send To menu? (more…)