Add Notepad2 to Windows Vista or XP Right Click Context Menu

Notepad2 is a minimalist program which consists of an executable and a configuration file. Since there is no installer for Notepad2, and no registry key added, so you would have to launch Notepad2 first before you can open or edit a document or text file. If you want to be able to conveniently open and view a file in Notepad2 by simply right click on the file in Windows Explorer, and then select “Open with Notepad2″ or “Edit with Notepad2″ or simply “Notepad2″ in the right click context menu that pops up, then you will need some sort of shell integration for Notepad2.

Download the Notepad2ShellIntegration.zip from the forum.

Inside the zip archive, there is 3 files namely OpenWithNotepad2.reg, EditWithNotepad2.reg and Notepad2.reg. The filename implied what’s the name of the menu item that is added to the shell integration for right click menu, i.e. “Open with Notepad2″, “Edit with Notepad2″ and “Notepad2″ respectively.

Simply double click on the name set your prefer to merge the registry key to your system, and on your next right click action, you will see the item nicely. Note that the registry registration file assume you put the Notepad2.exe file inside C:\Program Files\Notepad2\ folder. If this is not the case, you have to manually modify the registry script.

In the below example, the folder part to modify is pretty obvious. In you put Notepad2.exe in C drive root directory, simply change the last line to @=”\”C:\\Notepad2.exe\” \”%1\”".


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Edit with Notepad2\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Notepad2\\Notepad2.exe\” \”%1\”"


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This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.