How to add to and customise the right-click menus in Windows

Launch a web browser and go to the Filerfrog website. When the site appears, click the Download button. At the next screen, choose the version of Filerfrog to download (in most cases, this will mean the 32-bit edition – so click the left-hand button). If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder.

Now locate and double-click the downloaded file to start the installation. Follow the instructions, accepting the licence agreement and all the default settings. When the program has finished installing, click the Close button. Filerfrog then needs to restart the PC to finish setting itself up – click Yes to agree. When Windows has restarted, open a folder and then right-click on one of the folders or files inside that. Notice the new Filerfrog entry on the context (pop-up) menu: point to this to see a load of new options.

We’re going to use Filerfrog to organise some downloaded photos. Here we’ve opened a folder called Downloads and then highlighted all the pictures inside. Then, we’ve right-clicked on one of the photos, pointed to Filerfrog followed by Organize then clicked Extract Files to Folder. Filerfrog will ask for a name for the new folder before moving all the highlighted photos into the new folder. Click OK to continue.

Filerfrog has moved all our photos from the Download folder into a new folder that we called ‘Holiday photos’. Looking inside that, we can see that the photos have the meaningless names given to them by the camera. We can use Filerfrog to sort that out. Highlight all the photos and then right-click, point to Filerfrog and then click Rename. The program offers several useful ways to rename files – for this particular job we’re going to select Autonumbering with Append.

This dialogue box allows us to do several things. We can highlight individual files in the main list and then use the Up and Down buttons to change their relative positions. We can also rename all the photos and number them automatically. Type a 1 as the start number in the top field and then type Holiday into the empty Prefix field. This will change the incomprehensible filenames into sensible ones such as Holiday1, Holiday2 and so on. Click OK to confirm.

We can also use Filerfrog to reduce the size of photo files, which is handy when it comes to sharing them via email, for example. Highlight some photos, then right-click, point to Filerfrog followed by Image Manipulation and then click 50 per cent. When the dialogue box appears, leave the settings as they are: this will create a new folder called Resized Images, containing the shrunken files. The original photos will be left untouched.

If you’re happy with the quality of the smaller versions of the photos, use Filerfrog to delete the originals. Select all the originals, right-click on one and then choose Delete from the pop-up menu. Next, right-click on the Resized Images folder created in the previous step and choose Filerfrog followed by Organize then clock Extract Files from Folder – this will pull all the new smaller images out of the folder and into the original Holiday photos folder. A dialogue box will appear to ask whether you want to delete the empty Resized Images folder when finished; click Yes.

Filerfrog has a built-in encryption tool, too. This can be handy for hiding or otherwise securing sensitive files and folders. To do this, first highlight the relevant files or folders then right-click, choose Filerfrog followed by Security and click Encrypt. When the dialogue box opens, choose a password and type it into the top field and then into the field underneath to confirm it. Click OK. Filerfrog warns that you must remember the password in order to open the file again – click Yes to confirm.

Now try double-clicking one of the encrypted files (they’re depicted by an icon of a green frog holding a padlock). Filerfrog will prompt for a password before it can be accessed: type your code it into the empty field and click OK and moments afterwards, the file will be decrypted. This restores the file to its previous, unencrypted state. Encryption can be removed from lots of files at once. Here we’ve highlighted the other files in the folder and then right-clicked, clicked Filerfrog, then chosen Security and Decrypt. Typing in the password removes encryption on all selected files.

Finally, notice that Filerfrog has a Favorites item at the top of its menu. Choose this followed by Manage Favorites. A Customize dialogue box, similar to that used by Microsoft Word, will be displayed. This allows you to select favourite commands from the list on the left and add them to the Favorites menu by clicking the button with the two right-pointing arrows – moving them over to the right-hand column. Next time you open Filerfrog, they’ll be available in the Favorites menu.