Tuesday 6 September 2011

Add Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete buttons in Windows 7 Explorer Toolbar


The Windows 7 Explorer toolbar is decidedly bare – there are no buttons to Copy, Paste, Delete, Cut, Paste and do a bunch of others tasks, as was present in previous versions of Windows. For keyboard addicts it doesn’t matter. But for regular users it meant extra work with the mouse buttons.
This tutorial teaches you how to add these buttons to Windows 7 Explorer toolbar.

Add Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete and other buttons

1. Open Windows Run command box by pressing Win+R and type regedit to open Windows registry editor. Then navigate to this key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{fbb3477e-c9e4-4b3b-a2ba-d3f5d3cd46f9}
2. Highlight the sub-folder TasksItemsSelected under this key. Double click on Default registry word on the right pane of the registry editor.
regedit
3. This key already has some values, which look like this
Windows.print;Windows.email;Windows.burn;Windows.CscWorkOfflineOnline
4. Now append the following to the values already present
;Windows.Cut;Windows.Copy;Windows.Paste;Windows.Delete;Windows.Undo;
To see the effects of what we have just done, you need to restart Explorer.
(How to restart Explorer: Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager. Click on the tab Processes and kill the process named explorer.exe. All opened windows, the taskbar and the desktop icons will vanish. Click on the Applications tab in Task Manager and then click on the button ‘New Task’. Type explorer and hit the Enter key. The taskbar and the desktop should be back.)
Open Libraries > Documents and select any folder. You should see the added buttons as below.

Now here lies an annoyance: the above steps will add explorer buttons only to the Documents folder under Library. You won’t get them on other Library folders or regular folders. Not even the Document's folder if opened by navigating through the hierarchy in Windows explorer. To get these explorer buttons on other folder types we have to repeat these steps several times.
The table below lists the GUID keys of different folder types in Windows 7. If you want to add buttons to any of these folders, you have to perform the exact steps as described above, but on the associated GUID key.
Folder Type
GUID
Common Explorer folders{5c4f28b5-f869-4e84-8e60-f11db97c5cc7}
Documents folder{7d49d726-3c21-4f05-99aa-fdc2c9474656}
Images folder{B3690e58-e961-423b-b687-386ebfd83239}
Music folder{94d6ddcc-4a68-4175-a374-bd584a510b78}
Video folder{5fa96407-7e77-483c-ac93-691d05850de8}
Library Documents{Fbb3477e-c9e4-4b3b-a2ba-d3f5d3cd46f9}
Library Pictures{0b2baaeb-0042-4dca-aa4d-3ee8648d03e5}
Library Music{3f2a72a7-99fa-4ddb-a5a8-c604edf61d6b}
Library Videos{631958a6-ad0f-4035-a745-28ac066dc6ed}
Library ‘User added folders’{5f4eab9a-6833-4f61-899d-31cf46979d49}
Search results in Library Documents{36011842-dccc-40fe-aa3d-6177ea401788}
Search results in a Library Images{4dcafe13-e6a7-4c28-be02-ca8c2126280d}
Search results in a Library Music{71689ac1-cc88-45d0-8a22-2943c3e7dfb3}
Search results in a Library Video{Ea25fbd7-3bf7-409e-b97f-3352240903f4}
Search results in a Library ‘User added folders’{7fde1a1e-8b31-49a5-93b8-6be14cfa4943}
When you try to edit the registry key for Common Explorer Folders you might get an access denied error message.
registry-denied
If this happens, you have to take ownership of the registry editor and get full access rights. This is described in the next section.

Get full access and take Ownership of registry

1. Navigate to C:\Windows and locate the file regedit.exe (extension will be hidden by default)
2. Right click on regedit.exe and choose Properties. Then open the tab Security and click on the Advanced button.
regedit-properties
3. Open the Owner tab. If the current owner is TrustedInstaller, you will need to change the owner to your username. To do that click on Edit and choose your username from the list and click on Apply.
regedit-ownership
4. Close all windows to return back to regedit Properties
5. On regedit Properties, click on the Edit button, choose your username from the list and check the box Full Control under Allow.
regedit-fullcontrol
6. Click Apply and close all windows.
After you are done with the registry editing, don’t forget to revert all changes you have made – i.e. change ownership back to TrustedInstaller or Administrator and access rights to as it was before.
If you found the tutorial difficult to follow, use CustomExplorerToolbar utility to do this.

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