In the last musing we used a Right Click of the mouse to check on the location of a file. The more observant among you will have noticed that there was a lot more to the window which opened than just Properties. This time we’ll have a look at the others.

Firstly, the actual list does changed depending on what you have Right Clicked on. Have a look at the two examples below.

Example 1 taken from a program (Safari Browser actually) downloaded from the Internet.	Example 2 taken from a folder (My Documents) from a C drive.

First things first. There are a number of duplicates, like everything below Send Tois the same. Now all of these are very useful short cuts to doing mundane, everyday jobs. The type of job that is very useful to know how to do quickly.

Now look at the others. Unless you use Windows Vista you can ignore Run as administrator which is a security feature of Vista and can be used to “make” something work, i.e. install a program as in this case. Other things such as the references to Groove and OneNote are related to Office 2007 and so can be ignored again if you don’t have them. Open and Explore are both obvious for computer users (or at least should be!) while Shareonly works if you have more than one computer which can talk to each other through a network (can be a bit technical for non-geeks).

Ah “but what about Scan using Spybot-Search&Destroy and Scan with AVG Free?” I hear you say! Exactly.

Spybot is an anti-spyware program while AVG Free is an anti-virus program. You might not have either of those actual programs in your Right Click window but you will have your anti-spyware and anti-virus program present. Mind you, some packaged will scan for both Spyware and Viruses in one, in which case you’ll only have one Scan choice!

As anyone but the most newbie computer user knows both Spyware and Viruses (collectively called [1] Malware) are definitely among the “Don’t want” list of thing you can get from the Internet.

Now imagine that you have downloaded a file and saved it without opening or running it first (as you always should do) how do you check there isn’t anything nasty lurking inside? Easy, Right Click and scan just that one file by clicking on the Scan with …option. Only once you have been given the OK by your Malware scanner(s) is it safe to open or run the file.

Happy Right Clicking - and try it on other things not just files and folders.