A simple C# function to add context menu items in Explorer

~ Nish

I am currently working on a simple C# Windows Forms application to help me with editing/authoring articles for CodeProject, that basically strips unwanted files off zip files, and I wanted to associate an Explorer context menu entry with zip files that’d open the zip in my application. Of course, this was a mere matter of editing the registry and adding an odd key there and an odd value here. But I thought the function would be pretty useful for other people who might want similar functionality and so wrote it generically.

Usage

Here is how you can use the function :-

AddContextMenuItem(".zip", "ZipStrip",
  "Open with &ZipStrip", Application.ExecutablePath + " %1");

Code Listing

I had to mess with the indentation to avoid horizontal scrolling πŸ™‚

//Extension - Extension of the file (.zip, .txt etc.)
//MenuName - Name for the menu item (Play, Open etc.)
//MenuDescription - The actual text that will be shown
//MenuCommand - Path to executable
private bool AddContextMenuItem(string Extension,
  string MenuName, string MenuDescription, string MenuCommand)
{
  bool ret = false;
  RegistryKey rkey =
    Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(Extension);
  if(rkey != null)
  {
    string extstring = rkey.GetValue("").ToString();
    rkey.Close();
    if( extstring != null )
    {
      if( extstring.Length > 0 )
      {
        rkey = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(
          extstring,true);
        if(rkey != null)
        {
          string strkey = "shell\\" + MenuName + "\\command";
          RegistryKey subky = rkey.CreateSubKey(strkey);
          if(subky != null)
          {
            subky.SetValue("",MenuCommand);
            subky.Close();
            subky = rkey.OpenSubKey("shell\\" +
              MenuName, true);
            if(subky != null)
            {
              subky.SetValue("",MenuDescription);
              subky.Close();
            }
            ret = true;
          }
          rkey.Close();
        }
      }
    }
  }
  return ret;
}
Unknown's avatar

Published by Nish

33 thoughts on “A simple C# function to add context menu items in Explorer”

  1. Nish, I’m sure you are psychic. I was just planning out my next app when I decided to add explorer menu items. I hate registry stuff as finding anything in it is a nightmare. You just saved me at least an hours programming. Cheers.

    Reply

  2. Glad to be of help, Nonny πŸ™‚

    BTW be sure to check the return value (it will be true on success), because if you don’t have write-rights to HKCR, the function will fail.

    Regards
    Nish

    Reply

  3. You should have quotes around the %1 part, if you leave those out you might have problems when you encounter a filename that contains spaces.

    Reply

  6. hi nish,
    Iam a aptech student in from fiji and currently facing some problems with c#, could you please e-mail me some source codes explaining storing values and manupulating it using stuctures.
    Thank You

    Reply

  7. Nice code, congratulations!

    If I place “.bmp” in extension and I select 20 bmp files in explorer and execute the command, the explorer will open 20 instances of my program. How I do to these 20 bmp files will be, instead, 20 args of the command line???

    Regards

    Reply

  8. This looks great. One question I have is how would I go about getting file names with spaces? (I’ve tried putting quotes around the %1). What it is doing is actually passing the old DOS filename (c:\blah\blahh~\blah~.ZIP) to my program. If I use the FileInfo object and do a MessageBox.Show(fi.Name) it shows the DOS filename convention. My program actually parses the file name, so I would need some way to get that from this.

    Thanks!!

    Reply

  9. This helped me a lot. Just one doubt. How do I enable/disable a context menu. I want my context menu to appear only if something is copied to the clipboard. By something I mean Folder(s).

    Reply

  11. I like your code it helped a lot with registry editing, but adds nothing to the context menu, any directions?

    Reply

  12. Instead of messing with the indentation, you might have replaced “if(!null) {}” with “if(null) return false;”

    Just 2 cents πŸ˜‰

    Reply

  15. That was a good article nish. I need further enhancement in my project that is I must add icon to the menu item. How can I do that.

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply

  16. what if i wanna have 2 or more different program with the same MenuName? eg, *.doc, *.txt, *.jpg send into the function..?

    thank u very much

    Reply

  20. GShaik and Nish, would you please show how an icon(transparent) can be added at the left side of the added text like WinRAR

    Reply

  21. If my program is started by the context menu – as far as I can tell no commandline argument is sent to the app!! So how can I make use of this?!

    Thanks for the post anyway!

    Reply

  22. Thanks Nish, It’s exaclty what I needed.
    bookmaked you’re blog… lots of interesting stuff

    btw… another method for removing Explorer context menu could be helpful too πŸ™‚

    Reply

  23. Thanks for the simple but very useful code!

    A tip: surround the MenuCommand with quotation marks to allow the application to open files containing spaces — in your example it should be like this:

    “\”” +Application.ExecutablePath + “\” “\%1\””

    Reply

  24. thanks for the tutorial. but when I click on my option in the MENU, I receive an error. how can I do to Launch my application after the click?

    Reply

  26. a great tutorial. however, in function main (string [] args) is still missing save path parameter. I do not know how to do this? My goal is to add my program into ContextMenu (right click on excel file when my program and select the program will process excel file)

    Reply

  29. How to add sub menus to it like that of “New” or “Arrange Icons By” that are by default in explorer.

    Reply
  31. Pingback: Unable to get context menu to work with a PDF | Technology & Programming Answers

Leave a Reply