Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2

Another nice item to customize is the Send To menu, which appears after you right-click one of your files in Windows Explorer. The Send To menu lets you quickly send a file to a CD-R disc or floppy, the Desktop, a recipient via email, a zipped folder, or the My Documents folder. What's more, the contents of the Send To menu become part of the user profile. That is, the Send To menu can be different for each user of an XP system.

You'll find that adding other locations to the Send To menu is a very convenient way to perform file management tasks such as, well, sending files to locations other than the defaults. To do so, you need to edit the contents of a system folder called SendTo (not to be confused with the Send To menu).

Here's what you'll do:

1.

Open My Computer and then open the installation drive for XP. It's usually the C: drive. Look for the Windows directory to verify.

Note: If you can't see the items on your drive when you open it, then under System Tasks, click "Show the contents of this drive."

2.

Open the Documents and Settings folder. This is where User Profiles are stored. Open the folder of the target user.

3.

Next, open the SendTo folder for the selected user.

Note: The SendTo folder is hidden by default. If you don't see it, choose Tools | Folder Options. On the View tab, click "Show hidden files and folders."

4.

Now, choose File | New and then choose Shortcut. Follow the directions in the New Shortcut Wizard to specify where the new shortcut will point, as shown in Figure 7-12. You can even add a new subfolder for custom Send To shortcuts, and you can keep your shortcuts there.

Figure 7-12. Add a custom item to the Send To menu.

After you've completed this step, the new location added to the SendTo folder should appear in the Send To menu when you right-click in Windows Explorer.

This can be particularly time- and effort-saving if you back up files on a network computer every day. Create the SendTo shortcut for the network location, and you can then back up your data to other computers with a few clicks. No network browsing required.

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