When Windows is installed, numerous system folders are created. Quick Access Popup knows more than 50 of these “Windows Special Folders”. The My Special folders menu gives access to the most known and used:
Desktop
Document
Pictures
Downloads
My Computer
Network Neighborhood
Control Panel
Recycle Bin
With the first item of this menu Add Favorite – Special Folder…, you can add new system folders to this menu (see How do I add a favorite to my menu? for help on adding favorites to your menu). There are plenty of other special folders that you can also add using the Add Favorite button in the Customize window, for example: Libraries, Recent items, Startup folder, History, Favorites, Quick Launch, Cookies, Temporary files, etc. Special folders can be inserted in any QAP menu or submenu. For your convenience, the My Special Folders menu was built when you installed QAP. Feel free to add special folders to this menu or to move them around.
Edit the My Special Folders menu
The My Special Folders menu was added automatically to your main menu when you launched QAP. Using the Customize window, you will be able, if you wish, to rename this menu, move it or break up its content in other submenus. See how to open the Customize window and how to use it to customize your menu.
Changing folder inside Save As or Open dialog boxes is often described as being the single most productivity booster offered by Quick Access Popup.
Yes, the main QAP triggers (middle mouse button or Windows+W) can change folders in all software that use the standard Windows file dialog boxes (Open, Save As, etc.). It can instantly open one of your current, recent, frequent or pre-configured favorites folders.
However, this feature must be enabled in Options (first tab General, first option). The first time you try to change the folder in a dialog box, QAP takes you to this Options, General window.
If you enable this option, you understand that this feature is reserved to “file dialog boxes” (Open, Save As, etc.). If you use it in other types of dialog box, for example a Preferences dialog box, trying to change folder in this dialog box could modify and save values in the dialog box without any notification (see a more technical explanations below).
In order to enable Change folders in dialog box, you must confirm in the QAP Options that you understand the consequence of misusing the change folder feature in “non-file dialog boxes” and that you will only use it the proper dialog boxes.
Reopen Current Folder in Dialog Box
Talking about dialog boxes, the QAP feature Reopen Current Folder in Dialog Box under the submenu My QAP Essentials can accelerate your work in file dialog boxes by taking you instantly to the folder you use in Windows Explorer. See this video demo.
Technical explanation
If the Change folders in dialog box is enabled and you select a Folder favorite while the mouse cursor is over a dialog box (or when a dialog box is the active window if you use the keyboard hotkey), QAP sends commands to change the current folder in this dialog box. If the dialog box is not an Open or Save As dialog box, if it is an Options dialog box instead, for example, QAP cannot detect it (because all dialog boxes have the same class name “#32770”, regardless of the dialog box task) and QAP will act as if it was a file dialog box.
To change folder, QAP tries to change the content of a text field of the dialog box named internally “Edit1” or “Edit2” (in a file dialog box, this field is usually labeled File name). If it succeeds, QAP sends “Enter” to press the OK button of the dialog box. In a file dialog box, it changes the current folder in the dialog box. Then, QAP restores the initial content of the Filename field and stops, letting the user continue his work.
If the dialog box is not a file dialog box but contains an “Edit1” or “Edit2” (I’ve seen this situation only once but I have no stats on this), there is a risk to see the text field changed and the “Enter” sent to the OK to the dialog box, saving the changed content without the user consent.
The Current Windows menu is built in two sections. This first part shows the folders already open in the Explorer windows and, if you use this file manager, the Directory Opus listers.
The second part lists the applications running on your system (starting with the most recently activated window). Only applications having “visible” windows are listed. System-hidden windows and zero-width/height windows are excluded. Most of the apps in the System Tray could not be listed unless their window is already visible in the task bar.
When you select an item in this menu, its window is automatically activated (bring to the “front”). This menu is refreshed every time you open the QAP menu.
By default, the Current Windows feature is found under the In the Works menu (before v9.2, it was names Switch and located under the My QAP Essentials menu). You can add it to your menu by adding a favorite of type QAP Feature and select Current Windows under the Dynamic Menus section.
Application exclusions
There may be some applications that you do not want to see in the Current Windows menu. Option the Various Advanced Options tab in the Options dialog box. In the text box, enter a list applications that you want to exclude.
Enter any part of the window title of the application to exclude (the window title is what appears in the top horizontal bar of the window). You can enter multiple exclusions, one per line. For example, to exclude windows of applications Sticky and GhostWindows, enter these lines as shown below:
The Reopen a Folder shows the folders already open in the Explorer windows and the Directory Opus listers if you use this file manager. It is refreshed every time you open the QAP menu.
The Reopen a Folder is particularly useful when you are in a file dialog box and want to open a file in a folder already open in another Explorer window. Just select one of these folders in the QAP menu and the dialog box will be moved to it. Change folder in dialog boxes must be enabled in Options.
Reopen Current Folder
You can also reopen the folder in the currently active Windows Explorer window with the Reopen Current Folder in Dialog Box (video).
The Clipboard menu in the My QAP Essentials menu reflects the content of you current Windows clipboard. If the clipboard contains URLs, documents, applications or folders file path, QAP shows this list in the menu, allowing you to open a document, launch an application or navigate to a folder found in the Windows Clipboard.
For example, if you select and copy a group of files in Windows Explorer, the list of file paths resides in the Windows clipboard. Quick Access Popup scans this content and adds the files that exists in your system to the Clipboard menu. You can also copy a list of files from a text editor (or any other source) and QAP will display these files in the menu (each line of text must contain a file name/path alone). Relative paths and environment variables are supported.
QAP also scans the Windows clipboard for URLs and displays them as Link entries in the Clipboard menu. In the case of URLs, an address can stands anywhere on a line of text copied to the Clipboard. However, if one line contains more than one URL, only the last one is included in the menu.
To avoid too long delay when refreshing the QAP menu, the Windows Clipboard is processed only if it contains 10 000 characters or less. This default size can be changed in Options, Menus Advanced Options.
If you open the Clipboard menu when the Windows clipboard contains no file or URL, it displays the message No path or URL in Clipboard. If the Clipboard is empty, it displays Clipboard is empty and if it is too large, it displays Clipboard too large to be processed.
Users with dual-display or multi-monitor systems have full control on the location of the Windows Explorer windows displaying their favorite folders.
Enabling the multi-monitor option
By default, QAP let Windows decide where new Explorer windows are open. But you can control it by enabling the option On a multi-monitor system, always open the Explorer window on the active monitor under the File Managers tab of the Options dialog box. Make sure Windows Explorer is selected first (this option is not available for users of other file managers).
When this option is enabled, the new Explorer windows are open on the active monitor. The following screen capture shows a system that has two monitors. The active monitor is the one where the Middle Mouse Button (or another button if you configured it differently) was clicked to open the QAP menu. If you open the menu with the keyboard shortcut (Windows + W, by default), the active monitor is the one where is the active application (top most window).
Maximize a folder on the selected monitor
If, in the Add/Edit Favorite dialog box for a Folder favorite, you select a custom window position under the Window Options, and choose the Maximized window state, you can specify on which monitor the Explorer or Total Commander window for this favorite will be maximized. This is also available for favorites of types Special and FTP when Explorer or Total Commander is the active file manager (Directory Opus users should use DOpus Layouts instead).
QAP can read the current Windows folders custom icons and even set new custom icons to Windows folders .
When you create a favorite folder, if the folder already has a custom icon (configured in the hidden system file desktop.ini), this icon will automatically be associated to your new favorite and shown in your QAP menu.
If the folder has no icon, you can use the Add/Edit favorite dialog box link Set Windows folder icon to change the icon in the folder’s desktop.ini files to the image selected for your favorite. That way, your QAP menu and your Windows file system will show the same icons for your favorite folders. QAP can also Remove Windows folder icon if you want to revert your changes.
The Recent folders and Recent files menus list the recent places or documents memorized by Windows. An option in the Menu tab of the Options window determines the number of items displayed in these menus (default is 10).
Quick Access Popup Recent folders and Recent files are taken from the Windows virtual folder Recent items (C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent or, using the appdata variable, %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent).
This Windows system folder lists the files and folders recently accessed by the user. The Recent Folders menu includes only folder items from this list and the Recent Files includes the rest of it.
Windows is also using this list to populate the Recent Places virtual folder found in Explorer left pane. Recent items are also used to populate the Microsoft applications Jump Lists.
The Frequent folders, Frequent files, Recent folders and Recent Files menus under the In the works menu are populated by scanning periodically the Recent items Windows system folder. Since QAP v9.2, these items are collected in the QAP database allowing to calculate the frequency and determine the order of items in the Frequent items menus. This also improves performance when refreshing Recent items and Frequent items menus.
If, for privacy or any other reason, you want to remove the content of the Recent and Frequent items menus, you need to delete this content from the database:
In the Options window, under the More tab, click the Quick Access Popup Database button.
At the bottom of the Quick Access Popup Database dialog box, click the Flush Frequent Items from database button. This will delete all items from the database.
After you restart QAP, the Frequent and Recent items menus will be empty. If you keep the database enabled, these menus will be repopulated as new contents from the Windows recent items will be added, starting at the time of the last collection.
If you disable the Quick Access Popup Database (by unchecking the first check box in this dialog box), the QAP Recent folders and Recent files menus are populated by reading directly the Windows Recent items menus. To remove these items from the QAP menus, you need to reset the Windows special folder by following these instructions:
Open this folder: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
or use this shortcut: %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
Select all items in this folder and delete them.
The Recent Folders and Recent Files menus in Quick Access Popup are now empty.
Yes. Quick Access Popup menu can include favorites from network drives using UNC locations (like \\MyPortablePC\c\SomeFolder\…), a network drive letter (like N:\SomeFolder) and WebDAV locations (like https://sharepoint.server.com/SomeFolder). However, you have to pay attention to some situations that can occur when using network drives with QAP.
Network drives online or offline
In IT environments, corporate servers are normally always online. But in other environments, it can happen that network drives are temporarily offline. For example, if you attach your portable PC drive to your desktop PC, this network resource can be offline if the portable is on the road or just turned off.
When you use folders or files on a network drive, Windows remembers them in its Recent Items system folder. QAP reads this folder to add these resources to its Frequent and Recent menus. When QAP refreshes these menus, it normally accesses the resource’s drive (to check if a file exists or to read a menu icon, for example). If QAP was not protected against offline drives, accessing a network resources when a QAP background task refreshes its menus could cause a long delay before the menu is displayed (see: Why does QAP sometimes look frozen or takes time to show its popup menu?).
Starting with v11.0.7, QAP adds more robust protection against offline drives and add new options in Options, Menus Advanced Options.
If network drives can sometimes be OFFLINE
Keep the checkbox Network drives (“\\” or with drive letters) can sometimes be offlineselected. QAP will avoid actions that could cause unexpected delays when refreshing its menus.
If you use drive letters to attach your network drives, enter the letters of these drives in the Drive letters for network drives text box. For example, enter “NSW” for if drives N:, S: and W: are sometimes offline (in fact, you could also enter “N: S: W:” if you prefer since non-letters characters in this field are ignored). Resources on these drives will be treated as network resources.
Of course, if you try to launch a favorite from a network drive when it is offline, expect a delay (that could be as long as 20-60 seconds) during which QAP will be not responding as it waits for a response from Windows.
USB drives and USB keys assigned to drive letters do *not* cause a delay when QAP refreshes its menu. This is because Windows “knows” rapidly when these resources are unplugged and does not cause a delay when accessed by QAP. For this reason, these drives letters for these USB resources do not need a special treatment and do not have to be considered in this option.
If network drives are always ONLINE
If your network servers are normally always online, uncheck the checkbox Network drives (“\\” or with drive letters) can sometimes be offline (you do not need to specify network drive letters). In this case, QAP will check if files or folders exist before including them in its Recent and Frequent menus, retrieve custom icon folder and display the network drive’s label and free space in the Drives QAP feature (under My QAP Essentials).
Various notes
Password protection
If a network location is password protected, you may need to be logged in manually *before* navigating to it using Quick Access Popup.
HTTP locations
HTTP locations (URL format) will be automatically transformed to network path (UNC format) for compatibility with Windows Explorer. For example, http://abc.server.com/folder/subfolder/My Name.doc will be replaced by \\abc.server.com\folder\subfolder\My%20Name.doc.
Yes. Tech support, sysadmin and other power users love it!
In any file path (folder, document or application), the system environment variables like %appdata%, %public%, %temp% or %userprofile% (etc.) are supported in favorite location (for example: “%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates” will take you to the folder “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates”).
System variables can also be inserted in favorite advanced settings Parameters, Launch with this application and Start in. See What are favorites advanced settings?
You can also enter a location without path. In this case, the file is searched in the PATH environment variable directories or in app paths in the Windows registry. See Can I use relative paths in favorite settings?.
Finally, you can enter environment variables in favorites name. For example, a favorite name could be “Docs of %username%”.
Yes. You can enter path such using the .. (parent directory) and \ (root directory) symbols in favorite locations or advanced settings. Relative paths are “expanded” based on the current QAP working directory (see What’s the QAP working directory?).
In the following table, the relative paths are expanded as if the working directory was “M:\MyTools\QAP\”.
Relative path
Expanded path
..\Editor\MyNotepad.exe
M:\MyTools\Editor\MyNotepad.exe
..\..\setup.ini
M:\setup.ini
\MyTools\MyDocs
M:\MyTools\MyDocs
That way, a user having to run various tools on a host PC can carry a set of apps on a USB drive or key and use Quick Access Popup to easily launch these tools regardless of the drive letter assigned to the USB device by the host system. Combined with the use of system environment variables and special folders to easily access host PC’s system folders and user’s data, this make QAP the perfect tool for tech support users.
Relative paths can be used in favorite locations, advanced settings Parameters, Launch with this application and Start in. It can also be used for icons with the Edit icon resource link in the Menu Options tab of the Add/Edit favorite dialog box.
For favorites of types Application and Document, you can also enter a location without path. In this case, the file is searched in the PATH environment variable directories or in app paths in the Windows registry. In these examples, the folders in the resolved path column are assumed to be in the PATH variable. If you enter a location without a file extension, it is searched with all executable extensions in the PATHEXT variable: .COM; .EXE; .BAT; .CMD; .VBS; etc.
Types of favorites proposed when you click the Add button
An example menu with one favorite of each type
In your Quick Access Popup menu, you can add favorites of any of these twelve types:
Folder: Add your most frequently used local or network directories to reach them in a snap in a Windows Explorer, a file dialog box or a custom file manager, or turn them into a Live Folder.
Special Folder: Add Windows system folders from a list of more than 50 special folders, for example: Libraries, Recent items, Recycle Bin, Startup folder, History, Favorites, Quick Launch, Downloads, Cookies, Temporary files, etc.
Document: Insert your day-to-day documents in you menu and launch them in their native application from any window.
Link (URL): Add your preferred web pages and open them in your default browser at any time or in a specific browser if specified in advanced settings. Links are open in a new browser tab by default or in the current tab if you select it in Options, Various Advanced Options.
FTP Site: Open FTP sites in Explorer, Directory Opus or Total Commander, with login name and password inserted in site address (take note that the password is not encrypted, is saved in the settings file and sent on Internet in clear text – be cautious if your password protects sensitive data!).
Snippet: Insert sequences of characters that can be typed in a flash when you need to insert them in any application using an hotstring, a shortcut or the menu (snippets help).
QAP Feature: Insert Quick Access Popup features like Current Windows, Reopen a Folder, Drives, Add Active Folder or Web page, etc. in any submenu and assign them the shortcuts and icons of you choice.
Submenu: Gather related favorites in a submenu; submenus can be nested at will and each of them can be assigned shortcuts or icons.
Shared Menu: Manage the content of a submenu in an external file that can be saved on a network drive or a cloud drive (like Dropbox) and used on different PCs. Shared menu can be used in three flavors:
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.
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.
The QAP Features Add Active Folder or Web page and Add Active Folder or Web page Express allow to quickly add the current folder or web page to your menu. You can add folders this way in Explorer windows or in file dialog box windows (if this option is enabled) and you can add links to web pages in most web browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.). When you are in the folder or the web page that you want to add to your menu, select one of these features.
If you choose Add Active Folder or Web page, it opens the Add Favorite dialog box with the menu name and location pre-filled. You can change the menu name of this new favorite and select the desired options in the various tabs. When you add a web page, QAP tries to retrieve the web page title to fill the favorite name automatically.
If you choose Add Active Folder or Web page Express (add this command to your menu by adding a favorite of type QAP Feature), the favorite is instantly added at the top or bottom (according to an option in the Options, Customize Window tab) of the menu where the Add Active Folder or Web page Express was used. It is filled with the normal default settings and the folder’s name as menu name. No question asked. If this name is already used, “[!]” is appended to the menu name. If you want to change some settings, open the Customize window.
For folders, these QAP Features record the current position of the Explorer window in the Window Options tab. If you uncheck the Use default window position, this position will be automatically restored as it was when you added the favorite.
When you add a web page, its title is automatically retrieved and used as name for the favorite.
We all have a folder where we put files that just need to be checked once or that need to be extracted before saving them in their final location. Some people use their Desktop for this. Personally, I prefer to keep my Desktop clean and I’m using the subfolder C:\TEMP. You could also use the temporary folder created by Windows. It is hidden deep under the surface but Windows created the variable %TEMP% to make it easy to access.
Whatever your preference is, let’s see how to make it easy to access this folder in different ways using Quick Access Popup.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to
create a favorite for a folder;
give this favorite a distinct icon;
give your folder a shortcut to access it instantly;
QAP can read the current Windows folders custom icons and even set new custom icons to Windows folders .
