How to restore the missing NEW context menu entry in Windows File Explorer

Is your NEW context menu missing in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 or Windows Vista? When you right-click in Windows File Explorer, you will see a new entry to create new folders, shortcuts, files, documents, and so on.

NEW context menu missing

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If the Create NEW documents item is missing in the Windows File Explorer context menu, you can restore it by following the instructions. This usually happens because a registry key is lost or damaged. It is therefore a question of changing the value of a register.

Type regedit in the Run field and press Enter to open the registry editor.

Check if registry key

has the following value:

If it does not exist or has another value, reset it to that value.

Restart the Explorer and you are ready to go!

If you wish, you can also download this registry patch . Extract the contents of the ZIP file and click Recreate-NEW.reg to add the contents to the Windows registry.

This registry entry exists only if the Windows Desktop Update component is installed. If the Windows Desktop Update component is not installed, add the registry entry and value (default).

This article shows you how to edit, add and remove items from the new context menu.

New File Menu 1.4.2

New File Menu позволяет быстро создавать новые файлы с помощью контекстного меню Finder.
New File Menu — это просто самый крутой способ создания нового файла на платформе Mac OS X, вы можете щелкнуть правой кнопкой мыши в любом окне Finder, чтобы создать новый файл! Вы даже можете щелкнуть правой кнопкой мыши на рабочем столе, чтобы создать свои файлы.

Важно:

• Новое меню файлов реализовано как расширение Finder, вам нужно включить «Новое расширение меню файлов» в «Системных настройках» Расширения », чтобы появилось контекстное меню.

Характеристики:

• Щелкните правой кнопкой мыши в любом окне Finder, чтобы создать новый файл.
• Более 30 встроенных шаблонов файлов (включите необходимые шаблоны в настройках меню «Новый файл»)
• Поддерживаются пользовательские шаблоны, New File Menu позволяет создавать практически любые документы
• Расширение пути добавляется автоматически
• Звук воспроизводится по окончании создания файла
• Недавно созданный файл раскрывается в Finder
• Вы можете открыть новый созданный файл автоматически, включив опцию «Открыть файл по завершении создания» в настройках

Встроенные типы файлов:

• Простой текстовый документ
• Расширенный текстовый документ
• Документы MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), iWork ’08 / iWork ’09 (страницы, номера, ключевое слово)
• Документы OpenOffice / LibreOffice (текст, электронная таблица, презентация, чертеж)
• Скрипты (Shell, Python, Perl, Ruby и т. Д.)
• И много других видов документов.

Version 1.4.2

• Support keyboard shortcuts (Preferences -> Templates)
• Menu customization (Preferences -> Localization)

Add new file type in New Item of Windows File Explorer Ribbon Menu

Windows 10 comes with several useful features, and the ribbon menu of File Explorer is one of them, which helps users to carry out various tasks including Select, Cut-Copy-Paste, Share, etc. Among the included features, you will find an option called “New Item” in the Home tab of File Explorer’s ribbon.

This New Item option allows users to create a new file in a particular folder. If you use this option, there is no need to create the file in some other location and then move it to your desired folder. By using this option, you would be able to create the file directly in any folder. It makes the task easier to perform. But it may happen that you do not find your desired file type in that place. For example, you may have Photoshop installed on your PC, but you will not see any option to create a .psd file in the “New Item” section.

Add new file type in New Item of File Explorer Ribbon menu

We have seen how to add new file type in the right-click context menu’s “New” option. It is even easier to do the same with the New Item of File Explorer’s ribbon. Before you begin, make sure you backup your Registry files. This trick has been tested on Windows 10 Pro version 1607 Build 14393.479.

Now decide which file type you want to add. It could be a Photoshop .psd file extension or it could be any other one. If you want to build new PSD file, the extension would be .psd. Similarly the XML file extension is .xml and so on. This will work if you have the software which creates these file extensions installed on your computer.

Now open Registry Editor on your computer. To do so, press Win + R, type regedit, and hit Enter.

Navigate to the following key: COMPUTER > HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Here, you will find all the extensions you want. Find your desired extension. Right-click on the extension > select New > Key. Name it as ShellNew.

Select ShellNew key and create a new String Value on the right-hand side. To do so, right-click on the space > select New > String Value and name it as NullFile.

Now create a demo file in the app. For example, in this case, you need to open Photoshop software, make a new layer of your desired size and save the template with any name with a .psd extension.

Next, go to C:\Windows\ShellNew and paste the .psd file in that folder. In case you do not find the ShellNew folder, create it manually.

Finally, in the Registry Editor go to COMPUTER > HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT > file_extension > ShellNew. Right-click on the right-hand side > select New > String Value and name it as FileName. Double-click on the String Value and enter the file path that you pasted in the ShellNew folder in the prior step.

Now, you can find the option to create a PSD file in New Item of Windows 10 File Explorer.

Sometimes, you may not need to create a demo file to get it done. However, if your File Explorer does not show the option, you need to create a demo file as described above.

New File Menu 4+

Create files via Finder menu

Langui.net

Screenshots

Description

New File Menu allows you to create new files quickly via the Finder context menu.

New File Menu is simply the coolest way to create a new file on the Mac OS X platform, you can right click in any Finder window to create a new file! You can even right click on the desktop to create your files!

Important: New File Menu is implemented as a Finder extension, you need to enable «New File Menu Extension» in «System Preferences » Extensions» to make the context menu appear.

• Right click in any Finder window to create a new file
• Create new files via drag and drop
• Over 30 built-in file templates (please enable the templates you need in the New File Menu Preferences)
• Custom templates are supported, New File Menu is able to create virtually any kind of document
• Various options to configure the app behavior

* Built-in File Types

• Plain text document
• Rich text document
• MS Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• iWork documents (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)
• OpenOffice / LibreOffice documents (Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing)
• Scripts (Shell, Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.)
• Many other kinds of documents

Q: I can’t find the context menu to create a new file?
A: Please make sure that you’ve enabled «New File Menu Extension» in «System Preferences » Extensions», and make sure that you’ve added the specific location to New File Menu preferences.
If the problem persists, please disable «New File Menu Extension» in «System Preferences » Extensions» and then enable it again. The last resort is to relaunch Finder or restart your computer.

Q: There is no file templates available, what can I do?
A: Please remove the «

/Library/Group Containers/85P8ZUTQL8.net.langui.NewFileMenu/Templates» folder and relaunch New File Menu, then the folder should be recreated. (Do remember to backup any important data in the folder before removing it.)

Q: Is it possible to add the context menu to mounted volumes?
A: Yes. You need to add the volumes to New File Menu preferences first.

Q: How to hide New File Menu from the Dock?
A: Please simply quit New File Menu, the context menu extension will continue to work.

Q: Is it possible to make the save panel appear faster?
A: Please enable the «Keep the helper app running in the background» option in the New File Menu preferences, so that the app launching process is skipped.

How can I add an item to the ‘new’ context menu?

When I right click anywhere I get an option to add a new file with a specified extension. I would like to add some custom files into this menu, so I can right click and create a new PHP file for instance.

How can I do this?

11 Answers 11

To add extensions of your choice to the list: create a file, add the content below, save it as whatever.reg, and run it.

Note: Replace .png with the file extension you want to add and replace whatever with anything you want.

If you want to add a file as a template for the new item, use

and then place the file (html.html) in:

• For your own profile: %Userprofile%\Templates
• For all users: %Allusersprofile%\Templates
• For the whole system: %Systemroot%\ShellNew

One more detail: if you want to delete the «Windows Live Call» entry, use:

ShellNewHandler helped me to restore my Windows 7 shell menu > New > txt document entry.

Go in to registry editor and expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

Go to .file_extention

and create a key called ShellNew

Inside that, create a new string key called NullFile with no value

For example, if I wanted to create a new entry for a blank .wil object* I would create

*if the file extension such as .wil does not exist, I would first create a file with that extension and double click it. Open it with the program of my choice as this would then create the other needed registry keys and make your job easier.

It seems that the other solutions here are outdated. At least none of these worked for me in Windows 10 v. 1709 Build 16299.192 (Edit: still works in version 1809). I did some testing in a VM and this is what works in Windows 10 1709, as of 2018.01.12:

Add the registry file:

Create a new registry file file with the following content:

Replace xyz with the extension you would like to add. And replace XYZ test file with the name of the file extension (e.g a .scss file would be «syntactically awesome style sheet file”). If you want to use a template file see the explanation below.

It might be necessary to restart Windows Explorer after you have added the registry file. You can restart explorer.exe by typing the following in CMD:

Explanation of the code:

Will create a new file type in the registry.

This will enable you to use a template for all new files of this file format. We could for example write «template.xyz» and make a new file called “template.xyz” and use it a s a template. So each time you make a new file it will be populated with pre-made content. As Eduardo Molteni mentioned the paths for the template files are: %Userprofile%\Templates , %Allusersprofile%\Templates or for the whole system %Systemroot%\ShellNew . In this example we haven’t specified any template name because we don’t want to use any.

This will be the name of the file type both for the context menu and the newly created files. As far as I know leaving this value blank does not work.

The icon is added once Windows have associated a software with the file type.

For removing entries from the list, here is a program which allows you to enable/disable entries from a GUI. Much easier than searching the registry!

Unfortunately, it does not allow you to add entries.

None of these methods were working for me in Windows 10.

I finally found this page that explained that you need to reference another key that contains the name and default icon.

This is the minimum needed to create an entry, but it won’t have an icon.

NOTE: the third entry is for a new key textfile referenced in the (Default) value of .txt

Here are two ways to specify an icon

1. Tell Explorer to use the default icon for the content type:

or 2. Specify an icon under textfile like so:

Oh, and at least for me, just closing and reopening Explorer (make sure to close all instances) is enough to reload the context menu. You don’t need to restart the whole machine.

You didn’t say what version of Windows you’re using—if it’s XP you can download the TweakUI PowerToy from Microsoft (also covered in Wikipedia). Click on Templates and add/remove file types to your heart’s content. Here’s what it looks like:

Create a plain text file and add the following line to it:

Save the file and rename it’s extention to a .reg file. E.g. «myNewItem.reg». Be sure that you renamed the extention and not only the file name like (myNewItem.reg.txt)

Double click the file and it will update your registry.

The next step, and that is very important, restart your computer directly. So DON’T try to open the content menu to see if it’s already works! First restart you computer.

If you open the content menu to see if your amazing new item is already listed, the registry will be restored .

The registry key:

cannot be changed to accomplish what is displayed or not displayed on the «New» context menu. If you change that value, it will be overridden by Explorer the next time you right click and bring up the «New» context menu. Try it and you will see what I mean.

This information is all officially documented by Microsoft; normally intended for developers who are registering their own new file types.

Extending the New Submenu

When a user opens the File menu in Windows Explorer, the first command is New. Selecting this command displays a submenu. By default, it contains two commands, Folder and Shortcut, that allow users to create subfolders and shortcuts. This submenu can be extended to include file creation commands for any file type.

To add a file-creation command to the New submenu, your application’s files must have a file type associated with them. Include a ShellNew subkey under the key for the file name extension. When the File menu’s New command is selected, the Shell will add it to the New submenu. The command’s display string will be the descriptive string that is assigned to the program’s ProgID.

Assign one or more data values to the ShellNew subkey to specify the file creation method. The available values follow.

• Command : Executes an application. This is a REG_SZ value specifying the path of the application to be executed. For example, you could set it to launch a wizard.
• Data : Creates a file containing specified data. Data is a REG_BINARY value with the file’s data. Data is ignored if either NullFile or FileName is specified.
• FileName : Creates a file that is a copy of a specified file. FileName is a REG_SZ value, set to the fully qualified path of the file to be copied.
• NullFile : Creates an empty file. NullFile is not assigned a value. If NullFile is specified, the Data and FileName values are ignored.

And example create a new empty mpy file:

To create a new file based on a specific template file: