Add "Open with TextPad" to context menu in Windows

[badguynee]

This a little howto on adding textpad to the context menu in windows 7.
This is broken into two steps:

1. Add TextPad to your PATH variable:
This is not hard to do, and you really should read up on what the PATH variable is if you are going to mess around with it. If you can't figure out how to do this, then you shouldn't be doing this anyway.

2. Add "Open With TextPad" command to the registry
Open regedit
you want to go to:

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HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

then add a new key

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HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with TexPad

then add a new key to that

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HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with TexPad\Command

change the default vaule in your key to

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textpad.exe %1

props to howtogeek.com for having these instructions for notepad

[robertcollier4]

You can do it a better way by passing the filename with DDE so that Textpad will not launch a new instance but rather open the file in the current window. Save the following as a .REG file and Right Click on the .REG file and choose Merge.

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell]
@="Textpad"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Textpad]
@="&Textpad"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Textpad\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\TextPad 6\\TextPad.exe\" -s"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Textpad\ddeexec]
@="[open(\"%1\")]"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Textpad\ddeexec\application]
@="TextPad.6"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Textpad\ddeexec\topic]
@="system"