When you right-click on an item in Windows Explorer, you can open the "Send to" sub-menu and send the item to a compressed folder, the desktop (creates a shortcut), and so forth.

This is really handy but what's even handier is that you can add new items to the "Send to" menu. In particular, I like to add WordPad to this menu. Then I can "send" files to it and have WordPad open them even if they have other file associations. For example, I might like to view a C# file, a SQL script, or an HTML file in WordPad rather than opening them up in their default applications Visual Studio, a database program, or a browser.

How you add items to this menu depends a bit on your operating system.

In Windows XP

Open the Start menu and select Run. In the Run dialog, type SendTo and press Enter. Place a shortcut to the desired program in the folder that opens.

In Vista or Windows 7

Open Windows Explorer and paste the following into the address bar:

    %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Place a shortcut to the desired program in the folder that opens.