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Add More 'Open With' Options to Explorer Context Menu

Jan 7, 2014

As soon as a right click on any file, you may have noticed some explorer context menu options. If you have installed Notepad++, you see "Open with Notepad++" in context menu. Like this, there are many Software, which automatically add options to the context menu.

Sometimes we need to add options to open the file with our desired program like Notepad, Chrome, and so on.

There is a simple registry tweak for this.

1. Go to Run or press WIN+R and type in regedit and hit enter. The registry editor will open up.

2. Under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shell, add a new key by right-clicking on the shell folder.

3. Type the name of the option to appear, like “Open with Notepad”.

4. Now again right click on the above created key, and type the name as "command" for the new key.

5. Double-click on the default field under the newly created command key on the right side and enter notepad.exe %1 in the data field. This adds the Open with Notepad option to the context menu.

6. Now you can right-click on any file and check whether the new option has been added to the context menu.

Like this, you can add open with Chrome, WordPad, Word, etc. Simply replace the notepad.exe with your desired program name as data under the default key.

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