Custom Right Click Menu
Excel shortcuts September 23rd, 2009
Isn’t it exciting to have the ability to create your own right-click menu and customize it according to your needs. The default right-click menu doesn’t give much options.
Let’s add some frills to it:
1) Make list
How would you like the idea of creating the list of all the files that are in your folder in just one click?
Here’s the way to do it:
Suppose there is a folder named “Excel tips” and it has some text files and excel files which you want to list in just one excel file. It will take you ages if you start to key them in, especially when there are lots of files.
So here is how you can have your list ready in just one go:
Go to start menu, choose run and type “regedit”.
Hit OK. It will take you to Directory. Right click on shell and select New - Key
And give it any name, say “Make list.”
Now right click on Make List and select new - key again and give it a name command and then double click on default and enter the following command in value data:
cmd /c “cd/d%1 && dir >List.xls”
Now go back to your folder of which you want to make a list of all the files that it contains and right click and you will notice that a new “Make list” option has appeared.
If you click on it and then open the folder you will notice a new excel file called list.
When you open this file you will notice that you don’t actually need a lot of stuff and everything has been put into column A as shown below.
In order to segregate the names of files and to delete all unnecessary stuff, you can simply use the Excel’s “Text to column” function.
Simply select column A and choose “Text to Columns” option under the “Data” menu.Choose “Fixed Width” as it gives you the option to create or delete a break line to suit your needs.
Keep hitting Next till you reach finish.
You will notice it has separated the items into different columns and moved file names to a separate column from where you can easily cut and paste to some other clean sheet.
The best thing is you don’t have to follow the above steps every time you want to make a new list. The “Make list” feature will permanently sit in the right-click option and once you have created it, you will make lists in just one click from next time on.
2) Create more than one folder in just one click
When you right-click the default option also allows you to create a single folder. Now let us customise the right click to create more than one folder in just single click.
Follow the same steps as above and give it a new name say you want to create 5 folders in one go so call it “Make 5 folders” and then in the value data give the following command:
cmd /c “cd/d%1 && mkdir 1 2 3 4 5″
Now if you go to any folder and right click you will notice that “Make 5 folders” option has appeared.
And if you click on it and then open the folder, you will notice 5 new folders have appeared.
Now you can modify the command to your needs so if you need to make 10 folders in one go instead of 5 modify the command as:
cmd /c “cd/d%1 && mkdir 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10″
Now as I said before you don’t need to go to regedit and follow the same steps again and again…if you have made it once, this “Make X folders” option will permanently sit in your right-click menu.
3) Empty folders and Sub-folders content
Sometimes when you want to delete the files of folders and it’s subfolders but want to keep the structure with all the folders and sub-folders here’s how to do it in one go.
Follow the same steps as above and in the shell make a new key say “Empty folders and Sub-folders Files” and in the value data enter the following command:
cmd /c “cd/d%1 && del /s /f /q *.*”
Hit OK.
Now if you go to any folder and right click you will notice that “Empty folders and Sub-folders Files” option has appeared.
Now I have created one more folder called 1 inside “Excel tips” and has kept some files there. Now if I right click on Excel tips and hit “Empty folders and Sub-folders Files” all the files will be deleted not only in Excel tips but also that are there in folder 1 and only empty folder 1 will remain.
To delete only files with a particular extension EXT, use the following command which would delete all the text files in a particular folder and it’s subfolders:
cmd /c “cd/d%1 && del /s *.txt”
This command comes in very handy to get rid of all temporary files with the extension TMP.
Althougth this del command is very powerful, it has to be used carefully. Any files deleted this way will not go into the Recycle Bin (they will be permanently removed).
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