How to Add "Open with Notepad" to the Context Menu for All Files

 

You operating system generally decided the program to be used for opening a particular file. By default it assign a particular file type to a certain program. For example your all movies files are opened by Windows Media Player by default. But there are certain files which WMP cannot play but still it will keep popping up. Now in this case actually what you do is you right click on that file and selecd “open with” and then navigate to the particular program which will open that file e.g. VLC media player or such.

But to select that you have to first click ‘open with’ and then navigate to ‘Notepad’ if you want to open a particular file with Notepad e.g. registry files or host file or .bin file etc. If You would like to skip this step and add an entry which simply says ‘Open with Notepad”, then this hack is for you. Its not a new hack, but just for those who needs it and doesn’t know how?

 

Manual Registry Hack

1. Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

2. Right-click on “shell” and choose to create a new key, name it “Open with Notepad”.

3. Create a new key below that one called “command”. Double-click on the (Default) value in the right-hand pane and enter in the following:

notepad.exe %1

The change should take effect immediately… just right-click on any file and you’ll see the next menu entry.

 

Create Registry Hack

1. Open Notepad and copy past following

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with Notepad]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with Notepad\command]
@="notepad.exe %1"

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2. Save it as OpenWithNotepad.reg

3.Double-click on the OpenWithNotepad.reg file to enter the information into the registry. and its done.

 

How to remove it

1. Simple. Open Notepad and copy past following

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with Notepad]

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2. Save it as RemoveOpenWithNotepad.reg

3.Double-click on the OpenWithNotepad.reg file to enter the information into the registry. and it will be removed from right click context.