Order of right-click menu....

[Poulatien]

I recently tweaked my registry to add "open with notepad" to the right-click menu for files. The only problem now is that it places this at the top of the menu-even before open! Is there anyway to make it so it is displayed below open?

[reghakr]

I've added ones under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Unknown\shell\ and its the same result, so I don't think its posible.
I also noticed that the entries under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
all appear in the same order they appear in the registry, well, all but 1 (PowerArchiver) being the oddball.

reghakr

[petr]

Well, the order of the right-click menu is given by the default value of Shell in the registry. A small example: suppose txtfile has 2 keys in Shell - Open and Print (editing their default values in the right pane changes their names in the right-click menu, so you can name them eg. &Start and &Publish; the letter after & will be underlined). Now, these two keys will appear in the right-click menu in the alphabetical order (I suppose, here I'm not quite sure). But you can write the order you want to the default value of Shell in the right pane - so if you prefer Print before Open, the default value of Shell should be Print,Open (names of the keys separated by commas). The same applies to the Shell of * and Unknown.
Hope you could follow my explanation and that it was what you asked.

[Poulatien]

Thanks, that helped for the entries I added, but the 'open with notepad' option as well as my other custom option still appear above the open, scan with..., cut, copy, etc...
The order is basically the following:
open with notepad
open with irfanview
OPEN
scan with mcafee
cut
copy
etc..
properties

[petr]

I see. It seems that the Shell of * always goes before the Shell of a particular file type. What I described in my first answer only changes the order of commands within a given shell. Maybe someone else can help more.

petr

[jstolz]

I've never been able to divine how Win orders these entries. Theoretically, display of everything below the first separator line is controlled by the "Attributes" value for the object in question, but as to order... I dunno. Of course, order is irrelevant if you select the default action shown in bold.

Regards...

[Poulatien]

Could you explain how I could use the attribute value to get my added options under the first divider line? That's actually what is my primary concern. By order, I just meant having the bold open first-after that, it doesn't matter too much. Thanks.

[jstolz]

You can't add user-generated right-click functions below the separator line--those are hardcoded into explorer (however, explorer does check the "Attributes" flag under the HKCR\[filetype] to see which choices should be offered.

There have been some lengthy discussions here on how to do that--try searching with keywords "Editflag" and "Attribute"

Regards...