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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.

explorer-buttons

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.

Thanks Vadim Sterkin

If you found the tutorial difficult to follow, use CustomExplorerToolbar utility to do this.

Comments

  1. This is silly. We already have both keyboard shortcuts and right click context items to cover these needs. If you can't learn Ctrl C, V, and X, you are probably not going to have a hard time following all steps needed to complete this tweak.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Meant to write "you are probably going to have a hard time...."

    ReplyDelete
  3. There is no TasksItemsSelected under non-library folders key, which should I choose to edit?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, forgot to mention that. You have to create a new folder (Key) and name it TasksItemsSelected. The 'default' reg_key will be automatically created. Then just edit it as usual.

    ReplyDelete
  5. even after following the regedit permissions section, I still get the same error message when trying to create a new key.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Reize711: Make sure you set access permission and ownership to the same user account. There was a small error in screenshots regarding this (ownership was shown as Administrator and permission was set for 'Kaushik'), and this has been corrected. My apologies.

    ReplyDelete
  7. helli dear Kaushik.
    I'm Reza.
    i have same the problem by Rezie711
    i did anything you said also i am certain both permission and ownership are the same.
    but i can not still create any key called TasksItemsSelected.
    i just could create some buttons in the first (Document) but other non-library folders i can not create any key.
    that error message will appear again and again.
    please help me.
    answer here.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ok.
    i found the solution.
    instead of right click on Regedit to make permissions we must right click on the key inside of registry and set the must needed permissions for that key inside registry.
    u did not answer me.anyway....thanks for this post.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Reza. I didn't know how to answer, as I wasn't sure what was wrong. Good that you solved it yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  10. just do this:

    http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/custom_explorer_toolbar.html

    ReplyDelete
  11. I did work on one partition c, but my other partition do not have this buttons, any idea how to make it work on second partition?

    ReplyDelete

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