[Tip] Customize Hidden “Extended Send To” Menu in Windows, Add or Remove Shortcuts

When Windows Vista was released, Microsoft added a new feature to the OS which is called “Extended Context Menu“. Context menu is the menu which is shown when you right-click on an item and extended context menu is an advanced form of it. Extended context menu can be accessed by press and hold SHIFT key and then right-click on an item.

Extended context menu adds a few extra options to normal context menu which are only shown when you press and hold Shift key while right-clicking otherwise you’ll get normal context menu.

You can check these extended context menus anywhere in Windows such as Desktop, Windows Explorer, etc. Just press and hold Shift key and right-click and you’ll see some new options in the context menu such as open command prompt here, copy as path, etc.

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Extended context menu feature is not only present in Windows Vista but also present in all Windows OS which were released after Windows Vista such as Windows 7 and Windows 8.

The same extended context menu concept applies to good old “Send To” menu. Almost all Windows users use “Send To” feature, its one of the most useful and widely used feature of Windows OS. It allows you to quickly copy files, folder, etc to other places such as Bluetooth device, Desktop, DVD drive, etc.

When you right-click on an item and select “Send To” menu, it shows following items by default:

  • Bluetooth device
  • Compressed (zipped) folder
  • Desktop (create shortcut)
  • Documents
  • Fax recipient
  • Mail recipient
  • DVD Drive

Windows_Send_To_Menu.png

Number of items might be different for different systems.

Have you ever tried to access “Extended Send To” menu in Windows? Press and hold SHIFT key and then right-click on an item and select “Send To” menu. Now you’ll get many other shortcuts present in the menu as shown in following screenshot:

Windows_Extended_Send_To_Menu.png

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As you can see in the above screenshot, there are several extra shortcuts present in “Extended Send To” menu such as Contacts, Downloads, Favorites, Searches, etc.

The normal “Send To” menu can be customized by opening “SendTo” folder and there you can add or remove desired shortcuts.

To access “SendTo” folder, type shell:sendto in RUN dialog box or Explorer addressbar and press Enter. It’ll open “SendTo” folder:

Windows_Send_To_Folder.png

You can see in the above image, all default shortcuts which are shown in “Send To” menu are present in “SendTo” folder. You can delete an item to immediately remove it from “Send To” menu or you can copy any desired shortcut in the folder to add it in “Send To” menu.

Now the question comes how to customize “Extended Send To” menu? Recently an AskVG reader “J.R. Rickman” asked us about customizing “Extended Send To” menu:

I have tried for sometime now to edit my “Send to Extended menu”, this is the one you would use: “Shift + Send to” from the Context Menu. I have tried a great number of third party tools and none have given me the ability to edit any of the options that show up in the “Extended-Send to menu.” I have also used the “Shell: Send to” command which only shows the listing for the standard Send to list (not the Extended list). So of course, I know there is a way to accomplish the editing process, but I am not sure if it is in the Registry or in a file that I cannot find. At any rate, if you have a fix this problem, I would certainly be interested.

Actually this “Extended Send To” menu doesn’t store its shortcuts in Windows Registry. Customizing the menu is very easy if you know the process.

Today in this tutorial, we are going to tell you a simple way to customize “Extended Send To” menu in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. With the help of this tutorial, you’ll be able to add new shortcuts to “Extended Send To” menu as well as remove existing shortcuts from “Extended Send To” menu. The beauty of this trick is the newly added shortcuts will only appear if you press and hold SHIFT key while right-clicking on an item otherwise the shortcuts will not appear. So it’ll not increase the size of “Send To” menu.

So without wasting time lets start the tutorial:

1.Extended Send To” menu shows the extra shortcuts which are taken right from your User Profile folder. All shortcuts which are present in your user folder are shown in “Extended Send To” menu. Can’t believe? Here is the proof:

Type %userprofile% or . (yes, a single dot) in RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open your user profile folder which will contain following items:

Windows_User_Profile_Folder.png

As you can see in the above screenshot, all shortcuts which are present in the user profile folder are visible in “Extended Send To” menu shown in image 2.

2. If you want to add a new item to “Extended Send To” menu, simply create a shortcut of it in your user profile folder. For example, we have created a new folder “Personal Stuff” in our user profile folder:

Add_Shortcuts_Extended_Send_To_Menu.png

And it immediately gets added to “Extended Send To” menu as shown in following screenshot:

New_Shortcuts_Send_To_Menu.png

3. If you want to remove a shortcut from “Extended Send To” menu, simply delete it from your user profile folder. For example, we are deleting 3 shortcuts from user profile folder: Contacts, Downloads and Saved Games:

Remove_Shortcuts_Extended_Send_To_Menu.png

And Windows immediately removes the shortcuts from “Extended Send To” menu as shown in following screenshot:

Less_Shortcuts_Send_To_Menu.png

PS: Make sure to take a backup of the folder before deleting it so that you can restore it later or can access your data.

So you can see customizing “Extended Send To” menu is very easy task. You can add any desired shortcut or remove any unwanted shortcut from the menu without editing Registry or any system file.

Did you already know about “Extended Send To” menu? Do you use it regularly? Feel free to share your feedback in your comment…

Published in: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

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  1. @Errol
    Type shell:sendto in the Run dialog box (Win + R) or Explorer address bar and press Enter.
    Explorer will then open a folder with all your SendTo shortcuts.
    You can delete whichever ones you don’t want.

  2. Instead of %userprofile% can type only “.” (one dot) in RUN dialog (sysadmins are lazy peeps 🙂 )

  3. @ Riddle
    Thanks very much. That was very easy indeed, all these years and never knew that.
    You guys rock with these amazing tips.

    @ Topper
    Your tip is amazing BRO, never even knew that one.

    Its a good thing VG posted this tweak.

  4. Hello, Send to is beautiful command, but is there a way to make it where it can move it, not copy it to the destination? I download stuff all the time which goes into one directory, and then I waste a lot of time doing copy and then open up destinations depending on where they go then pase.

    If there was a way to just move it, I can add diffrent destinations to the menu like send to or whatever, and then be done with it.

  5. WARNING! Be careful because the items in the Extended Send To menu are not shortcuts as you say. They are the real folders in your user profile! If you remove Contacts, you are not removing a shortcut to Your Contacts folder. You are actually removing the Contacts folder and all your contacts with it (in case you use Outlook or any other program that stores contact information in this folder). If you remove My Pictures, you are actually removing My Pictures folder and all the pictures you may have inside it, etc. How can you remove one of these folders from the Extended Send To menu without actually removing the folder in your User Profile? As fas as I know, you can’t.

  6. Very dangerous stuff.

    Deleting the “Saved Games” will delete ALL YOUR PROGRES in the games that use this folder
    Deleting “My Documents” will delete ALL YOUR DOCUMENTS

    This is the most dangerous tip ever given but deletes * in the root of your drive

    NEVER USE IT IF YOU DON*T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING

    leave the extended sent to menu alone and ix the normal sent to folder to your wishes
    If you want to access a folder in the extended sent to often then create a link to it in the Send to folder

    VG clearly doesn’t know what hes ‘s talking about

  7. ^^ VG knows what he was talking about but you don’t know what you are talking about. The tutorial was for advanced users who want to add or delete shortcuts from extended send to menu. If you don’t want to delete shortcuts, no one is forcing you.

  8. I used to have a sendto addon in previous windows versions that would introduce a “sendto folder…” where you could write the name of the destination folder and it would offer the folders matching your typing.
    It would also allow a “moveto” action with the same features.
    But I forgot which utility it was!
    Do you remember it?

  9. How do you control what objects have a send-to context?
    Is it possible to add sendto to context menus for drives?

  10. seem to work ok (added pic’s ) showed in send to folder. so tried. could I find pic! no so tried again and it said it was there. tried search in pic it could’t find it either.I even renamed a copy, still no find.

  11. @AC – perhaps a good ol’ batchfile may do the trick using the move command? “move %1 “path-to-folder\folder\”. Don’t know if that’s the correct syntax, but I’ve used a lot of specific batchfiles in the sendto folder in the past.

    Could aslo make a shortcut of the SendTo folder itself in there for sending shortcuts to the ST folder – remember to make a shortcut of the file FIRST – don’t send the file itself.

  12. I have just installed Windows photo editor which (using your instructions) impressed me very much.
    In looking at your enhanced send to tip reminded me that in windows 8.1 I get this following dialog box, Is there a way to correct this?

    send to desktop – error message “windows could not create the shortcut, check to see if disk is full”
    Thanks for the great website

    Jim

  13. To perform a move instead of a copy, hold down (or keep holding down) Shift when you click the Send To menu item.

  14. Hi VG,
    Thanks for your tip., I have successfully added and removed a few shortcuts using your prescribed method.
    But I am unable to add BLUETOOTH and MAIL RECIPIENT in “Send To” command.
    How can I do the above?
    Many thanks,
    Rana

  15. Sincere thanks VG – great info!

    I have a question regarding the use of a single dot in the Explorer addressbar as you describe in your article. When I do this on a freshly installed ‘win9’ (8.1update1) which is not yet ready for the net internet Internet Explorer pops up with “You aren’t connected to a network”. Where was IE trying to take me (No MS account setup yet/no Onedrive integration.) and how does thios relate to user profile folder?

    When tested on my old XP machine a single dot in the Explorer addressbar opens my default browser at “www,,” (ie two dots). As a side question, is this function potentially useful?

  16. ^^ Yeah. Opening . (dot) via Windows Explorer addressbar will launch IE. Just use RUN dialog box to use . shortcut.

  17. Hi Vishal,
    What about putting a folder to be a Subfolder in the SendTO? In that way, if I have a DRIVE F for example and Subfolders that branch to 5 other folders on F, I don’t have to have 5 extra links to make the list longer?

  18. Hi,
    I,ve tried to accomplish both deleting and adding folders to the send to in xp pro but am not having any success. I have xp pro with C as my systems drive..Ive never been able to get my L drive which is for photos and documents etc to show up in the send to folder. There are many items in it that are not useful to me…………is there a limit of the normal send to drive preventing the addition of l drive? I suppose that is why the extended send to menu exists. G
    I would like to move items from the regular to the extended send to menus although it is a pain to have to use extended menu. If I can actually delete and add folders as you folks are doing it would solve so many problems for me.
    Ive been manually sending folders to the l drive for so long now and often I just get frustrated and dont bother sending items at all.
    Im using the steps as explained so any idea why it wouldnt work on xp pro? How many of u are actually still running xp pro?
    I do have two vista that are in disrepair as well as other OS not working…my xp pro is still running of a desktop that was made for me…tons of storage…3.0 usb ports galore. At some point I will upgrade but cant afford to upgrade all of teh photo editing software I have..many are suites which I paid thousands for but am now financially devastated..if anyone wonders why Im with xp still. G

  19. Re: the use of run “.” and possibly deleting the contacts folder. This brought something to mind that I have always wondered about. For a Long Time now, that Contacts folder has never had anything in it but the single contact belonging to the Owner of the System. In my Contacts folder, I only see “Me”. It is the same in every other system I have ever looked at. Though it has never made sense to be that way and if you know why, I would surely like to have that information.

  20. Firstly, it’s important to note that using the Shift + Sendto option changes the file action from Copy to Move (if you keep the Shift key depressed). However, and unfortunately, since the Windows 10 Version 1607 patch, the SHIFT Extended Menu option does NOT work.

    Ran SFCscan – no joy. Neither does googling reveal any permanent fix for this issue.

    However, for those that are accustomed to using SHIFT to initiate a move operation (and not necessarily the ‘Extended SendTo’ functionality) but have realised that since the latest Windows 10 patch you can not: I have found that if you activate the context menu using Control then switch the modifier key to Shift, the full list of your ‘Shell:Sendto’ menus will be available as move destinations.

    I don’t have time to wait for Microsoft to get to the bottom of this issues, so this works for now.

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