Tag: Add Favorite

How do I add a favorite to my menu or edit an existing favorite?

There are several ways to add favorites to your menu. But the most common one is to open the Customize window, click the Add button and, in the Add Favorite Type dialog box, select the type of favorite. For each favorite type, you see a short description on the right side. See this quick overview of favorite types.

To edit a favorite, select it in the Customize window and click the Edit button. You can also double-click a favorite in the list edit it (except for submenus where the double-click will open the submenu). Skip the first section and go to Basic Settings tab, just below.

In this page, we will see the most common options, available for all favorite types, using the Folder example.

Select the type of favorite to add

In this example, select Folder and click Continue.

See also more options about favorite folders and options for the other types of favorites:
 
 
Basic Settings tab
In the first tab Basic Settings, enter the short name for your favorite. This name will appear in your menu. In the next field, select the target of your favorite. The content of this field vary depending on the favorite type. For a Folder, click Browse to select the favorite folder’s location.

If whenever you want to temporarily remove this item from your menu without deleting it, click the Disable this favorite checkbox. If you only want to hide a menu item but keep its keyboard shortcut or hotstring active, check only the Hide this favorite checkbox.

Menu Options tab

In the Menu Options tab, choose in which section of your menu the new favorite will appear. In the first drop down list Favorite parent menu, select the Main menu or one of its submenus (more about submenu).

After you selected the parent menu, set the position of the new favorite in the drop down list Insert the favorite before this item.

Next, select the icon for your favorite. By default QAP chooses a default icon based on the favorite type or, for applications and their documents, the system default icon for this application. In the Windows dialog box Change icon (or Changer d’icône in my French version of Windows), select an icon in the current file or browse for another icon file. You can find icons in .EXE, .DLL and .ICO files (more about icons).

Finally, in the Menu Options tab, you can set a keyboard or mouse shortcut for your favorite folder. This will allow to open this folder without having to open and browse the menu. Beside the Shortcut field, click Change. In the Change shortcut dialog box, select the keyboard modifiers (Shift, Alt, etc.) and the mouse button or key of your shortcut (more about shortcuts). Click OK to save your shortcut. Alternatively, in the field below, you can also assign a hotstring to launch your favorite (more about hotstrings).

There are other options in the remaining tabs but these options will be covered in the FAQ pages dedicated to adding the various types of favorites (see the list in the text box at the top of this page).

Saving your changes

To save your new favorite, click the Add button (or to save your changes when editing an existing favorite, click the OK button) and do not forget to save your changes by clicking one of the big buttons Save & Close or Save in the Customize window.

See your new favorite in your menu. In this example, we added the favorite:

  • to the My Project Submenu submenu
  • before the Project Charter item
  • with a calendar and clock icon
  • and the shortcut Shift + Control + P

 

3) Adding Favorites ,

What are the advanced options for favorite folders?

Two tabs of the Add/Edit Favorite Folder dialog box give more advanced options for favorite folders.

In the Windows Options tab, you can set where the Explorer window will be displayed. First, uncheck the Use default window position checkbox. Then, decide if you want to display the favorite folder in a maximized, minimized or normal Explorer window. If you choose normal, you can decide at what position and what size this window will be displayed. If your system has more than one monitor and you choose Maximized, you can select on which monitor the window will be maximized (more info about multi-monitor systems).

These window options are only available for the favorite types open with Windows Explorer (Folders, Special Folders and FTP site). For most other applications and documents, moving and resizing the window proved to be unreliable.

Open a sub folder automatically

Often, when you open a given folder, what you want, in fact, is to work in one of its sub folders. For example, let’s say you have folder for a client and, under it, sub folders for each of its orders. Most probably, you will want to work in the folder for the latest order of this client. This folder should be the one that was the most recently created.

When you open a favorite folder, you can ask QAP to automatically open the most recently created sub folder in this favorite folder. Set this option in the Advanced Settings tab. QAP could also open the most anciently created, or the most recently/anciently modified or accessed sub folder. Note about the last accessed date-time: if accessed date tracking is disabled on your system (it is disabled by default), this date-time should be the same as the last modified date-time. See how you could enable accessed date tracking on Windows 7 or 10.

Launch with another application

Normally, favorite folders are open in Windows Explorer (or Directory Opus / Total Commander if you selected one of these file managers in Options). In the Advanced Settings tab, you can tell QAP to launch the folder with another application. The designated application will be launched with the favorite folder path as parameter. This option is also available for Document, Special folders, URL and FTP favorites.

In the following example, the folder will be launched by the following batch file (saved here as C:\Users\Standard\my_batch.bat) :

c:
cd \
echo List files in %1
dir %1
pause

 

When launched with QAP, this folder path is passed to the target application (here, my_batch.bat) as the first command-line parameter. See the result of the execution of this batch.

Live Folders

See also, about Live Folders: Can a submenu be updated live with the content of a folder?

3) Adding Favorites ,

Can a submenu be updated live with the content of a folder?

In QAP, this feature is called a Live Folder. To turn a regular favorite folder into a Live Folder, click the Live Folder Options tab and check the Live Folder (including subfolders) checkbox. This turn your favorite folder into a submenu containing the actual content of the folder.

Set the Number of subfolder levels to include in Live Folder menu. Subfolders will be displayed as submenus. Choose a sort criteria and sort order. By default, Live Folders are sorted alphabetically.

You can choose to Hide in menu the Icons or the File extensions. If you show icons, you can set their size with the dropdown list Size of icons in this menu:

  • select a custom size (from 16 to 64 pixels) for this menu;
  • inherit the size from the parent menu;
  • use the default size from Options, Menu Icons dialog box;
  • choose to display no icon in this menu.

You can also choose to include or not  Hidden or System files in this Live folder menu. If your Live Folder contains many items, you can display its menu in multiple columns. Set the Number of items per columns (0 for no column break) depending on your screen size.

You can see on the following screen capture a Live Folder submenu. The My Project Folder opens a submenu with, at the first position, an entry to open the folder itself and, below, the three subfolders in that folder. This Live Folder menu can be open using the shortcut Shift + Control + P.

Finally you can also include documents in your Live Folder. If you check the Include documents option, by default, all documents are included. You can select which files are included or excluded using the Include or Exclude radio buttons and the text box below to list:

  • extensions separated by spaces (for example bak bk);
  • wildcards expressions separated by spaces (for example: *.bak "my file??.ext" *copy*.*);
  • or a regular expression with “Regex:” (for example: Regex:i)^\Qabc\E.*\Q.docx\E$).

If you include documents in a Live Folder menu, you can choose to Exclude folders. If there are multiple levels of folders, folders are excluded only in the deepest level’s menu. 

This second example shows a Live Folder with two levels of subfolders and including documents (for this screen capture, icons size was reduced to 16 px).In the Customize window, Live folders are identified in the Type column.

Note: Take care not to overload your QAP menu with Live Folders. Windows menu are not designed to handle very large number of items. There is a default limit of 500 items in QAP Live Folders. This limit is there to protect you against too large number of items that could make QAP unstable, including hanging it. You should see Live folders as a way to put the most used big branches of your file system into your QAP menu and use your file manager or the file dialog box to navigate into the smaller branches and leaves.

3) Adding Favorites , ,

How do I add favorite document to my menu?

To add a document to your menu, in the Basic Settings tab, click the Browse button to choose the document in the file dialog box. If the Short name for the menu is empty, it is automatically filled with the file name of the selected document (without its extension).

In the Menu Options tab, the icon is automatically set with the system default icon for this type of document (based on the document’s file extension). You can customize this icon. As for other favorites, you can also select the submenu, position in the menu, shortcut or hotstring for this favorite document.

When you click a document favorite in the menu, it is automatically launched with its associated application (based on its file extension). In the Advanced Settings tab, you could choose to launch the document with another application. In the following example, the document would be open with a application named “Translate”.

 

3) Adding Favorites ,

How do I add favorite link (URL) to my menu?

To add a web link to your menu, in the Basic Settings tab, enter the address in the Link (URL) text zone. After you filled the address, you can click the Get title button to retrieve the page title from the web (some site may not return the title). Of course, you can also enter a short name of your choice.

By default, Links favorites are always open in a new browser tab. You can have them open in the current tab (to navigate the browser to the selected URL) if you deselect the options Always open Links in a new tab or window in Options, Various Advanced Options.

Other settings in the Menu Options and Advanced Settings are similar to those described in the other Add Favorite FAQ pages.

3) Adding Favorites ,

How do I add favorite FTP site to my menu?

An FTP favorite allows you to open a file transfer session between an FTP server and your local file system using, depending on your configuration, your default browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, …), Windows Explorer or a dedicated FTP Client software (like FileZilla).

In the Basic Settings, enter the Short name for the menu and the FTP Site URL. If you enter only this information, you will be asked for a login name and password each time you launch the favorite.

You can enter the Login name that will be sent automatically to the server in the format ftp://username@ftp.myserver.com. In this case, you will be asked only for the password.

Finally, you can enter both Login name and Password that will be sent automatically to the server in the format ftp://username:password@ftp.myserver.com. Then you will be logged automatically without any prompt. However, take note the password is NOT encrypted when sent over the Internet or saved in your settings file. Do not enter your password if the data it protects is sensitive.

When sent to the server, the login name and password can be encoded or sent plain. With most browser and file manager, it is recommended to encoded it. In some case, like when using the file manager Total Commander, it should be sent as plain text. By default, the info is sent encoded except if QAP is configured to use Total Commander as default file manager. If whenever you receive an error message like the one below, you can try changing the encoding setting in the Advanced Settings tab.

Take note that “encoded” is not “encrypted”. Remember that the password is NOT encrypted.

In the Advanced Settings, you can also choose your own FTP client software. Browse for its executable file in the Launch with this application text zone. You can also send parameter to the FTP client using the Parameters field.

In this example, the software FileZilla is used to open the FTP server and is instructed to open the c:/temp folder as local folder (as shown below).

3) Adding Favorites ,

Can I add a folder or file from its context menu by right-clicking its icon in Windows Explorer?

You can use Windows Explorer context menu (right-click menu) to add favorites of any of these three types: Folder, Document and Application. In the following example, the user right-clicked the Excel file project-budget-WBS. The context menu Add File to Quick Access Popup menu will create a favorite for this document.

Quick Access Popup will automatically detect if the selected file is a folder, a document or an application and will create a favorite of the correct type.

Explorer context menus are also available in Total Commander or Directory Opus.

Fore more details, read the page Explorer Context Menus Help.

3) Adding Favorites ,

Can I add favorites from the command-line or a batch?

You do it with the QAP executable companion QAPmessenger.exe installed in the QAP application folder. This utility is used to send commands to QAP from the Windows Explorer Context menus. But you can also use it this utility to add QAP favorites from the command line, a batch file, a Windows shortcut, etc.

Enter one of the following lines at the command prompt, in a .BAT file line or in the Target field in a Windows shortcut. Replace C:\Program Files\Quick Access Popup\QAPmessenger.exe with the current path and filename of QAPmessenger in your setup.

The two first lines add folders and the other ones add files. The ones with “Express” add favorites with default values without showing the dialog box (be cautious if you use them in a batch loop).

"C:\Program Files\Quick Access Popup\QAPmessenger.exe" AddFolder "C:\FolderPath"

"C:\Program Files\Quick Access Popup\QAPmessenger.exe" AddFolderXpress "C:\FolderPath"

"C:\Program Files\Quick Access Popup\QAPmessenger.exe" AddFile "C:\Folder\FilePath.ext"

"C:\Program Files\Quick Access Popup\QAPmessenger.exe" AddFileXpress "C:\Folder\FilePath.ext"

See also how you can use a command-line to display the QAP menu to your menu.

3) Adding Favorites , ,

Can I copy a favorite with all its settings?

Yes. In the Customize window, you can copy favorites of types Folder, Document, Application, Special Folder, Link, Snippet, FTP and QAP Feature. The Menus and Groups cannot be copied.

To copy a favorite, select it and click the Copy button or hit Control + Y. Rename the new favorite or select another submenu using the Menu Options tab.

 

You can copy multiple favorites in one click. Select the favorites with Shift + Click or Ctrl + Click, click the Copy button and select the destination menu (you cannot copy multiple favorites in their original menu).

 

3) Adding Favorites ,

Can I add multiple favorites in one click?

This feature is available with QAP v11 or more recent.

You can add multiple favorites in one operation from various sources. Select the Favorite, Add Multiple Favorites from the Customize window menu. In the dialog box, select the source of these favorites and click Continue.

The various sources are:

  • add favorites folders or applications from the favorites found in the Current Windows menu;
  • add items from the Recent Folders or the Recent Files menus;
  • add items from the Frequent Folders or the Frequent Files menus;
  • add multiple QAP Features or Special Folders;
  • add folders, documents or applications favorites from a selected folder;
  • add any types of favorites from a QAP settings file, selected from a flat list
  • add any types of favorites from a QAP settings file, selected from a hierarchical tree view (with QAP v11.1 or more recent)
  • add favorites from a CSV (comma-separated values) file (with QAP v11.6.2 or more recent).
  1. In the Menu dropdown list, select the menu where the favorites will be added.
  2. To exclude from the list the favorites already found in your menu, check the checkbox Exclude existing favorites.
  3. For favorites from QAP Settings files, Folders or CSV file only, click the Browse button to select the source file or folder.
  4. The list in the Add Multiple Favorites dialog box can be sorted by clicking on the column headers.
  5. Click the favorites you with to add to your menu.
  6. If you wish, you can edit the name of a favorite by selecting its row and pressing F2.
  7. Click Add to insert the favorites in the destination menu and click Save in the Customize window.
For many of the sources of the Add Multiple Favorites dialog box you can filter the list by keywords.
Importing favorites from a hierarchical list of favorites from a QAP settings file

Adding favorites from a CSV file

Adding from a CSV file is available using QAP v11.6.2 (or more recent). The requirements to add favorites by importing a CSV import file are:

  • The CSV file must be comma separated (to convert from tab-separated or other formats, see my other application CSV Buddy).
    • If a field includes a comma, enclose it in the field encapsulator "..." (double quotes).
    • To insert a double quote inside a field, double the double quotes and embed the field in double quotes, for example "This is a ""quoted"" word".
  • The first line of the file is the header and is required.
  • The file must have one line per favorites except for menus that also have a closing line (see the example below).

For all favorites, the only required fields are the three firsts (except for submenus where the FavoriteLocation field is empty).

FavoriteType
FavoriteName
FavoriteLocation

Other fields are optional. Favorites types supported are:

Folder
Document
Application
URL
FTP
Snippet

To insert a menu separator line, simply add a line with FavoriteType X, remaining fields being empty. If the exporting app supports column breaks in menu, the FavoriteType for a column break is K, remaining fields being empty.

The possible values for the property FavoriteDisabled are: 0 (favorite enabled and visible, default value), 1 (favorite disabled and hidden) or -1 (favorite enabled but hidden in menu, shortcut/hotstring active).

In this simple example, after the header, the file contains a Folder, a line separator, a Document (with a comma in its name), a Menu containing only an Application (see the line closing the menu) and, back in the main menu, a Snippet. A last Folder favorite is hidden. In each case, except for the Menu-End line and the line separator, after the favorite type, the line includes the favorite name (that should be unique in its menu), the favorite location (or content for Snippets) and, optionally, an icon resource, a keyboard shortcut,a hotstring, etc.

FavoriteType,FavoriteName,FavoriteLocation,FavoriteIconResource,FavoriteShortcut,FavoriteHotstring,FavoriteArguments,FavoriteAppWorkingDir,FavoriteLaunchWith,FavoriteLoginName,FavoritePassword,FavoriteDisabled
Folder,My Projects,C:\Projects\,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,3",+^p
X
Document,"Project Charter, 1234",C:\Projects\My Project Charter.docx,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,5"
Menu-BEGIN,My Menu,,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,8"
Application,Gantt App,C:\Apps\GanttApp\GanttApp.exe,"C:\Apps\GanttApp\GanttApp.exe,1",,,-option x,C:\Projects\
FTP,Project Repository,ftp://www.server.com/folder,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,5",,,,,,username,password
Menu-END
Snippet,My ProjectName,Project ABC,,,"::,pn"
Folder,Hidden Folder,C:\Program Files,,,,,,,,,1

Select the favorites you wish to add to in your menu and click the Add button.

Submenu can be embedded, for example:

...
Menu-BEGIN,My Menu,,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,8"
...
Menu-BEGIN,My SubMenu,,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,8"
...
Menu-BEGIN,My SubSubMenu,,"C:\My Icons\IconFile.dll,8"
...
Menu-END
...
Menu-END
...
Menu-END
...
3) Adding Favorites , ,