Customizing "SendTo" Context Menu

I spend a lot of time helping people troubleshoot problems.  In many cases the work consists of sitting next to someone saying "click this" or "open that" especially log and configuration files.  Believe me when I tell you it takes a lot of patience sometimes to watch someone to right-click a file, select "Open with" from the context menu and select Notepad.  Especially when it must be done dozens of time in a row.  If only it were easier to open text files with non-standard extensions...

Allow me to introduce you to the SendTo folder.  The SendTo folder is a folder stored in your profile that contains shortcuts to send files to.  Common locations are drives, Documents, Compressed Folder etc.  Open Windows Explorer, browse to some files and right-click.  I'll wait.  This folder can be customized to make your life easier.  In the troubleshooting scenario described above the first thing I do is create a shortcut in this folder to Notepad.  Once created, we can open log, txt, cfg, xml etc. files be right-clicking and selecting Send To > Notepad.  You can create shortcuts to network shares (e.g. your home drive) to make it easy to moves files to a central location.  You can create shortcuts to applications Like Excel or Microsoft Paint.

In order to view the folder you must configure Windows Explorer to "Show hidden files, folders and drives".  Browse  to the SentTo location shown below, right-click and select New > Shortcut from the context menu.  That's it.

Windows XP / Windows Server 2003

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\SendTo

Vista / Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo