13th August 2002
Lockergnomie Robert Jones has a great tip for getting the most out of your "Send To" menu. "I don't always like to open an image file in the 'default' application assigned to that image type. After a while, I found my right-click 'SendTo' menu getting pretty cumbersome as I had loaded it with shortcuts to several different viewers. Then I had a brain-flash. On my W98-SE installation, I simply copied my "MultiMedia" program group from the 'Start Menu' to my 'SendTo' folder. After checking that it works for you, open your SendTo folder and delete any 'old' shortcuts you may have created. Now I can right-click | SendTo on any media file, slide over to the 'Multimedia' folder icon and get a cascading list of shortcuts to all my apps. I'm going to begin organizing my other 'SendTo's the same way." Great tip, Robert! As some of you may have noticed, there are some dependencies in the above tip, and we'll tackle those right now.
To make a Multimedia program group, just right-click your Start Menu and choose Open (if you are one Windows 2k/XP choose Open All Users), once opened you will see the make up of your Start menu. Double-click programs and then go File | New | Folder, this will give you a folder named "New Folder" that you can rename to Multimedia (or whatever you like). From here, all you have to do is drag and drop your multimedia programs into this new folder. I use this same method to organize my Start Menu by placing all my tech utilities into a Utilities folder, all my games into a Games folder and stuff like Microsoft Office or Works into a Business folder. Now all you have to do to be able to perform the send to tip is to find the SendTo folder. To find your SendTo folder, just go to the Windows Search/Find tool, type "sendto" (sans quotes), and click "Find" or "Search Now." All that is left to do is right- click your Multimedia folder, drag it to your SendTo folder and choose "Copy Here." Extra special on tips today... Wow! Two tips for the price of one. Not only have you learned how to organize your Start Menu, but you also learned a faster way to open a file in the program of your choosing.