Windows file management is one of the most important skills to know in order to be a proficient Windows computer user. If you do not know how to do things such find, copy, move or delete your files, you will have difficulty in many other areas of your daily computing tasks.
For those who are always copying or moving files, you have many choices of how to go about doing so. You can use the Windows shortcut keys such as Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to cut and paste or you can right click on a file and choose copy or cut and then go to the destination folder and choose the paste option or press Ctrl-V on your keyboard. A better option is to be able to copy or move files and folders to a different directory simply by right clicking on them. In this article, we will be showing you how to add a copy to folder and move to folder right click context menu item in Windows.
Normally when you right click on a file or folder, you have several options including copy and cut as shown in the image below.
In order to add the copy to folder and move to folder right click context menu items, we will be performing a simple registry edit. If you are not comfortable editing the registry or have never done so before, this might not be something you should do. If you make a mistake, you risk having your computer not function properly but if you are careful, you should be ok.
To open the Windows registry editor, you can type regedit in the taskbar search box and then open the tool.
Next, you will need to navigate to the following key. You can also right click the text below and paste it into the address bar of the registry editor.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
Once you are there, right click on the ContextMenuHandlers key\folder and select New Key. Then name this key Copy to.
Then in the right hand pane, double click on Default within the new Copy to key and add {C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13} in the Value data field with the brackets. This will add the Copy to right click context menu item.
For the Move to right click context menu item, right click on ContextMenuHandlers again and select New Key once again. Then name this new key Move to.
Once again, double click on Default within Move to and add {C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13} in the Value data field.
Your registry editor window should look similar to the image below.
Now when you right click on a file or folder, you will have a Copy to and Move to menu selection.
Then when you choose one of the options, you will be prompted as to where you want to copy or move the selected file or folder to.
For Windows 11 users, you will need to click on Show more options first unless you have the classic right click menu enabled. You can also hold down the Shift key when right clicking to go directly to the secondary menu.
For additional training resources, check out our online training courses.
