A couple years ago I had a manager who liked me to email him the full path to where certain files were located. Even if the same directory was used—over and over—for the same files, he still wanted me to email him the full path. Since Windows XP does not have a right click context menu option to copy a file’s (or folder’s) path, I had to right click, select properties, then select the path displayed in the properties dialog box, copy it, and then paste it into the email to my boss. After a while that got annoying, so I wrote this quick little app to make my life… well, less annoying. :) With XP Copy Path, it’s a simple two step process: right click a file (or folder), select Copy File Path. Done.
Despite its name, this application WILL work with Vista and Windows 7. However, both Vista and Windows 7 have a similar feature already available. If you right click a file while holding down the shift key, an expanded context menu will appear which includes an option to copy the path. Two annoyances: First, I don’t want to hold shift before I click just to get that option. And second, using the built-in command surrounds the path with double quotes, which means you can’t then paste the path directly into, for example, windows explorer. So even though these days I primarily use Windows Vista, I keep this baby installed. It comes in handy quite frequently even though I no longer have a boss to send file paths to.
Happy user? Donating a few bucks is good karma! =D