Using "Send To" feature to add destinations to itself

Introduction

Here is a time saver tip to add shortcuts to the Windows "Send to" menu by using the "Send to" feature on itself.  

Background

The "Send to" context menu in Windows is a handy feature that enables you to quickly send a file to different locations or applications like floppy disk, desktop, e-mail etc.

If you look at the Microsoft documentation here there are many steps to add an item to the "Send to" menu every time you want to add a new destination. 

How to do it

Every user on a Windows computer has a SendTo folder. The SendTo folder contains the shortcuts for the destinations that are displayed on the "Send to" menu. When you add new destinations to the SendTo folder, they appear on the “Send to” menu. 

To have the “Send to” feature send destinations to itself all you need is to place a short cut to the SendTo folder inside the SendTo folder. 

Now if you are familiar with windows this information is enough to get you started. Incase you want to see how exactly this is done read the steps below:  

Step 1: 

Find out the SendTo folder for your version of windows. 

• WinXP: To navigate to the “SendTo” folder in Windows XP type the command “SendTo” in the run prompt. 
• Windows Vista: To navigate to the “SendTo” folder in Vista type the command “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo” in the run prompt. 
• Windows 7/8: In windows 7 or 8 open an explorer window and type "shell:SendTo" in the address bar (without the quotes, see below)  

Step2:  

Create a short cut for the SendTo folder and name it “Send to SendTo” (or anything you find meaningful).

Step 3:

Copy the shortcut created above into the SendTo folder.

Once you are done with steps 1 to 3 every time you right click on an explorer item you will see an additional option in the “SendTo” menu that reads"Send to SendTo". 

Right-clicking on a shortcut and choosing "Send to" -> “Send to SendTo” will add the shortcut as a destination in the “Send to” menu.

Some useful tips with the “Send to” feature? 

• Here is my favorite (Send to ILSpy): Once you add a short cut to the ILSpy application in the SendTo folder using the “Send to SendTo”, you could reflect a DLL just by right-clicking on it and sending it to “ILSpy”.
• Often while editing config files on server machines you may need to open it as an admin user so that you can save your changes. Using the “Send to” feature you could right click on a text file and send it to a notepad shortcut which is configured to run as an admin user, with the below steps:

1. Create a short cut to notepad.exe and check the “Run as Administrator” checkbox in the “Advanced properties” for the shortcut.  



2. Right click on the short cut -> Choose “Send to” -> “Send to SendTo”. 



3. Once you complete the above steps, you could right click on a text file and choose “Send to” -> notepad.exe; which will open the file in notepad as an admin user. 

;

Points of Interest  

1. Using the above steps one can easily add destinations to the SendTo menu without repeating all the steps mentioned in MSDN.
2. Unlike the “Open With” feature you can select and send multiple files to an application if the app supports it.
• E.g.: Select multiple media files and send them in a single step to KM player.