Help getting more out of M$ Sendto Powertoys?!

June 14, 2007 10:33 PM

I'm a Win2k user and have been in love with a couple of M$ Powertoys shell extensions that have been around forever: The "sendto" .nameonclipboard and .contentsonclipboard right click options. The only thing I regret is the amount of time I spend using the mouse to navigate to my selection after the first right click: rightclick->sendto->selection(contents/name). I'd love to figure out how I could left click to select / focus the file, and then finish with a control key combination. Better yet would be the ability to just (key combination)-> (left middle whatever) click to perform the action. Ideas?
posted by lasitter to computers & internet (6 comments total)

If I follow you.... use the 'right-click' key, sitting between right-control and right-windows
posted by pompomtom at 10:42 PM on June 14, 2007

Though it can do a lot more, AutoHotKey is the kind of thing this is made for.
posted by Ookseer at 11:33 PM on June 14, 2007

You can use the "Application" key as pompomtom suggests, or Shift+F10.
posted by grouse at 1:37 AM on June 15, 2007

pompomtom: The right click part isn't a problem. I would be happy if I could do the right-click then finish with ONE more keypress or control key combinaton.

It's the extensive mouse navigation part I'm trying to eliminate. The smaller your text and icons are (and mine are small) the more concentration and time is required to get to the selection with the use of the mouse only.

Ookseer: I have AutoHotKey installed, but I'm not using it at the moment. Is it possible to give AHK coordinates that are relative to the position of the active window? Problem for me is that AHK memorizes exact grid coordinates, and if the window has moved, they don't work. Anyone has tips on AHK's ability to do it all without a mouse and I'm all ears!
posted by lasitter at 3:54 AM on June 15, 2007

lasitter: You can get to the Send To menu by pressing Shift+F10, N. Then you can press the first character of the item you want.

If it is unambiguous, then it will be sent immediately. If there are several items that start with that character, you will have to select them with the arrow keys or by pressing the same character again, and then press Enter.

You can also make items unambigous by preceding them with an arbitrary 0-9 or other character.

You can use AutoHotKey to shorten the above, no mouse clicks necessary.
posted by grouse at 4:38 AM on June 15, 2007

Two ways off the top of my head to get AHK to do what you want:

1) I'm pretty sure that once you've got a context menu open, you can just hit an arrow key to "activate" it, then navigate the menu using the keyboard. You can use this technique with AHK to do what you need (have it hit Shift-F10, then an arrow key to select the menu, then "S" for Send To or whatever, right to roll out, etc.).

2) If your Explorer context menu changes often enough that relative keyboard commands don't work well, AHK also has the ability to detect the presence of particular images on the screen and move the mouse to them. This would involve taking a screenshot of the menus when "Send To" is visible, and when "Selection (Contents)" or "Selection (Name)" is visible. Then you save just the text that says "Send To"/"Selection (x)" as images. Set up a macro so that when you activate it, AHK hits Shift-F10 to bring up the context menu, then detects the presence of "Send To" on your screen, clicks it, detects the presence of "Selection (x)", clicks it, and finishes.

AHK is extremely powerful once you dive into the manual for a good while.
posted by chrominance at 7:57 AM on June 15, 2007