MenuRighter Update!

MenuRighter is my addin for modifying right-click menus, also known as context menus. It’s been around for three years and downloaded a few thousand times. It’s one of the cooler things I’ve ever made. I’ve just finished making some changes to it.

With MenuRighter you can turn this…

table context menu

into this…

better table context menu

With four clicks I removed the Cut, Copy, Paste and Clear Contents buttons from the List Range Popup (Table) menu. With a few more I added my entire Personal Macro workbook (the cleverly named “myBar”) and its Tables sub-menu. Using MenuRighter’s new search functionality I quickly found and added two filter options along with the “Select Visible Cells” button.

Here’s what MenuRighter looks like. It’s divided into the Source menus and controls on the left and Target ones on the right. The Target menu is the one you’re adding controls to:

MenuRighter form

Removing and Adding Controls
And here’s a couple of quick videos showing how I did the deleting from, and adding to, in the Table context menu. This first one shows how to delete the controls – just select one and click Remove. For even faster removal you can double-click the control in the list:

removing controls

Here I’m selecting the spot to insert the “Clear Selected Filter” and “Filter by Selected Cell’s Value” controls in the Target listbox. Then I filter in the Source combobox, click the Add button, and “hey Presto” they’re added. For even faster addition you can double-click the control to be added.

adding controls

In both examples above, I clicked the “Apply Changes” button to actually modify the context menu. Up until then the “Reset to Current” button will revert the Target listbox to the context menu’s current setup. And at any time you can use the “Reset to Default” button to reset the menu back to Excel’s default.

Moving Controls

You can see in the clip above that controls are added above the selected control in the target menu. (If no control is selected the new control is added at the top. You can also use the Up, Down, Top and Bottom buttons to rearrange and controls in the target menu.

Settings

“But wait” I hear you say, “how did you know to choose to the “List Range Popup” menu to modify the context menu for a Table. The answer is MenuRighter’s handy “Show Labels on Menus” checkbox. It temporarily adds a control with the name and index to the bottom of each right-click menu.

show labels on menus

There’s two other setting checkboxes. “Double-type dots” has to with MenuRighter convention for showing the Menu..Sub-menu..Control hierarchy. For instance, the Open control on the File is shown as Add Command..File..Open. If your search filter involves one of those “double-dots” I didn’t want you to have to type both, so, with that option checked, typing one dot gets you two.

The other Setting “Match Source Names” has to do with typing in the Source dropdown list at the top. That list contains all the toolbars that you can filter through in your search for controls. With the option checked, the combobox autofills the dropdown with the closest-matching item in the list. With it unchecked, it just filters based on whatever you type. It’s hard to describe, so just try it out.

The “Execute” Button
One other helpful new feature is the “Execute” button. When you’ve selected a control in the source list, and if that control is enabled, click Execute to run that control. For example, if you’ve selected Add Command..File..New and you click Execute, you’ll get a new workbook. (Pro Tip – choose the New command without three dots).

Search Tips

If you’ve used MenuRighter before, you’ll see that the main changes involve finding controls. The old version uses more of an Explorer type model of drilling down to controls. This new one lets you filter, with two big advantages: it’s faster and it’s more helpful if you have no idea where to start looking.

For example, the “filter by Selected Cell’s” value is a new control since 2003, so only shows in three context menus. Start typing “Filter by” into the Source combobox and you’ll see your choices instantly. On the other hand the Camera tool has been around (and hidden) forever. Type in “camera” and you’ve found it! “Freeze Panes” is another one that’s easy to find this way.

If you just want to scan through menus you can do it by scrolling through the seventy-or-so menus in the Source combobox. Or, you can choose menus in the Target combobox and click the “Show Current” button. Here’s an example of showing the Add Command controls. (Add Commands represents all the controls that were available in Excel 2003’s menu modification dialog):

Add Command menus

Looking for A Few Testers

I’ll be posting this new version soon, but in the meantime it would be great to have a few folks try it out. If you’re interested please let me know in the comments section or through the contact form.

12 thoughts on “MenuRighter Update!

  1. Pingback: Excel Roundup 20150420 « Contextures Blog

  2. Just ran across this, thanks to Debra Dagliesh. Have downloaded the previous version and will be giving it a walkthrough on a couple of projects from the past.
    .
    Please include me in your candidates for testing. Tried some semi-automated context menu solutions in the past, and got next to nowhere. Offering my services is just my way of “Saying thanks for fixing an ugly headache from my past!”

  3. Please include me to beta test the same… am a teacher at a local management college… teaching Spreadsheet modeling…

Speak Your Mind

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To post code, do this: <code> your vba here </code>