Bulk up your context menu with FileMenu Tools
When I'm doing file-management chores, I'm usually in too much of a hurry to navigate the various options on the File, Edit, and other standard toolbar menus. It's faster to simply right-click the file and choose an option from the context menu that pops up. Unfortunately, the option I need is usually not on the right-click menu. There's a great free utility that not only adds a bunch of useful file-management tasks to your context menus, but also makes it easy customize the menus by adding entries of your own devising, and removing the ones you don't need.
FileMenu Tools from LopeSoft lets you automatically rename multiple files based on various patterns, find and replace a text string in multiple files at once, and convert the contents of the clipboard into a file inside the selected folder. Other neat tricks the program performs include file shredding with a single click, opening a command prompt, and copying the file's path to the clipboard.
Add options to your context (right-click) menu, including custom shortcuts, via the free FileMenu Tools utility.
One function I'm trying to teach the utility is how to add the location of my ftp server to my context menus' Send To submenu. It appears that the Send To options need to point to a local folder or an executable file. Whenever I enter a server address, the shortcut disappears from the menu. It's tough to complain about features missing from a free program, however.
FileMenu Tools adds many useful file-management items to your context menus and submenus.
Bonus tip: How do you open the context menu of the selected file or folder without right-clicking? By pressing the context key on your keyboard. It's the one with the menu icon, and it's probably either on the opposite side of the spacebar from the Windows key, or right next to the Windows key. In fact, I didn't realize what the key was for until I clicked it by accident when I was aiming for the Windows key. I guess some icons are easier to figure out than others.
Tomorrow: A fix for overzealous security software.
Dennis O'Reilly has covered PCs and other technologies in print and online since 1985. Along with more than a decade as editor for Ziff-Davis's Computer Select, Dennis edited PC World's award-winning Here's How section for more than seven years. He is a member of the CNET blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET.
