Adding a sub-menu in Windows context-menu

Question

I want to add a sub-menu to the right-click menu of Windows. Whenever a user right-clicks on a file or a folder, my application name with the sub-menu must appear there.

How to handle this?

Answer 1

You want to edit the Windows Explorer context menu. You can do this in a couple of different ways:

1. There is a utility at http://www.ghacks.net/2010/08/15/add-custom-items-to-windows-explorer-context-menu/ which provides a bit of hand-holding. It looks like it will also let you add sub-menus directly.

2. Manually add the appropriate entries in the registry; see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321379/en-us May be useful for testing, but generally nasty.

3. Create a .reg file to add the entries automatically. A bit less error-prone, but still hazardous.