Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Regedit Examples

Here are three typical regedit tweaks, spelled out for you step by step.

Encrypt/Decrypt from the Shortcut Menu

As you know from Protect Your Home Wireless Network, one of the perks of using Windows 8 is that you can encrypt files and folders, protecting them from people who try to open them from across the network or using a different account.

If you use this feature quite a bit, however, you’ll quickly grow tired of opening the Properties box every time you want to encrypt something. Wouldn’t it be much more convenient if the Encrypt and Decrypt commands were right there in the shortcut menu that appears when you right-click an icon?

Of course it would. To make it so, do this:

• Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER→Software→Microsoft→Windows→CurrentVersion→Explorer→Advanced.

  Now, for this trick, you’re going to need a key that doesn’t actually exist yet. Fortunately, it’s easy to create a new key. In this case, just right-click the Advanced “folder,” and then, from the shortcut menu, choose New→“DWORD (32-bit) Value.” You see “New Value #1” appear in the right side of the window, ready to be renamed; type EncryptionContextMenu, and then press Enter.

  Tip

  The birth of a new Registry entry is a good opportunity to name it, but you can rename any value or key at any time, just the way you’d rename a file icon. That is, you can open the renaming rectangle by right-clicking or by pressing F2.

• Double-click this value on the right side: EncryptionContextMenu.

• Make this change: In the “Value ...