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Asked: 2026-06-10T21:16:35+00:00

I’m creating a Windows application that needs to add an entry to the Send-To

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I’m creating a Windows application that needs to add an entry to the Send-To explorer context menu, and needs to do so for all users. Since the Send-To folder is specific for each user, with no common folder for all users, I’m left with two choices:

I can go over all user profiles, as well as the default user profile, find the SendTo folder and add the shortcut to it. This will ensure the shortcut is deleted during uninstall.

Or, I can make sure the shortcut is in the SendTo folder each time a user logs in (by adding my application to the start-up folder of all users). This will make my life a lot easier during installation, but when the application is uninstalled, all those shortcuts will not be removed.

So either way, I need a way to find the SendTo folder of all users. I can scan HKEY_USERS and find the SendTo folder of each user (it might not be in the default location, the user can move it), but how do I find out the user profile’s root folder? The registry has something like %USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming… for the SendTo folder. How can I figure out what %USERPROFILE% is for another user?

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Easier approach: use the launch sequence of the exe itself to check whether the shortcut it present on launch, and create it if not.

    Uninstall for all users is best handled using ActiveSetup which will run “something runnable” once for each user logging onto the machine. In your case a simple batch command could do the job.

    If you do chose this uninstall approach, you must make sure that your msi installer checks for this uninstall key and deletes it on install – otherwise you have a delete operation scheduled for the shortcut the next time a user logs on.

    Also keep in mind that each install should use a different entry in ActiveSetup to ensure that the shortcut creation is re-run for a user who has had it uninstalled already. This last part might be slightly incomprehensible before you read more about ActiveSetup: http://www.etlengineering.com/installer/activesetup.txt

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