How it works

• 3½ Floppy (A)
  Selecting this option will automatically copy the file that you right-clicked to your floppy drive A. Of course you should insert a floppy with sufficient disk space first, Send-To can't insert it for you, it's not that good.

• Desktop (create shortcut)
  Selecting this option will create a shortcut to this file on your desktop to make it a lot easier to access this file in the future by simply double-clicking the shortcut instead of having to dig for the file on your hard drive first.

• Mail Recipient
  Selecting this option will open up Outlook Express, pull up a new e-mail message window and automatically attach a copy of the selected file to the e-mail. All you do is enter the recipient and some text and you're ready to send the file on its way.

• My Documents
  Selecting this option will automatically copy the selected file to your My Documents folder.

This is a great way to save some steps and make it easier to perform those tasks. You probably begin to see how handy this can be. Of course the question that pops up is "How do I customize this Send-To menu to make it work better for me?" You'll be surprised how easy it is.

Customize the Send-To menu

Some programs that you install might add their own option to the Send-To menu. But you can add more yourself. Customizing the Send-To menu is very simple. All you need to do is create a shortcut to the application you want to use and drop it into a certain folder. To demonstrate this, let's add an option for Notepad to the Send-To menu.

Open up Windows Explorer and find the following folder: C:\Windows\SendTo

You will notice that it contains a number of icons - the 4 described above and maybe more. To add the Notepad option, all you need to do is create a shortcut to the Notepad executable in this folder. To do that, right-click inside this SendTo folder, select New/Shortcut. Push the Browse button in the window that appears. In the resulting dialog box use the Look In drop down menu to select your C drive. Then double-click the Windows folder. Scroll through the list of files in this folder until you see a file called Notepad.exe. Highlight it and click Open which returns you to the Command Line of the first window. The command line should now look like this: C:\WINDOWS\NotePad.Exe. Click Next and give this shortcut a more pleasant name such as Notepad and click Finish.

Now you'll see a new shortcut in your SendTo folder called Notepad. Select your C drive in Explorer, find the test file you created earlier, right-click on it and select Send-To. You will see now a new option called Notepad. Click it and the test file will automatically open in Notepad.

Think about the steps you saved. Normally you would have to click Start/Programs/Accessories/Notepad, then click File/Open, maneuver through the hard drive until you find the file in question, highlight it and open it. Now you can just right-click the file in Explorer or My Computer, select Send-To/Notepad and voila! - there it is!