How can I control right-click "new" offerings?

DavidOdden · 19 Nov 2022

Version 21H2. When you right-click the desktop or the file list screen in File Explorer, you are offered a "New" option, which leads to a set of available file types (e.g. "text file", "Word document", "folder"). Apparently, LibreOffice has hijacked the file types, so that the only new file types available to me are the 5 LO file types. Word documents still open with Word, Excel files still open with Excel, etc, the only problem is the list of "new file" options. The option of clicking to create a compressed file is now gone.

I have no idea where this selection is controlled and how to fix it.

Bree · 19 Nov 2022

DavidOdden said:

Version 21H2. When you right-click the desktop or the file list screen in File Explorer, you are offered a "New" option, which leads to a set of available file types (e.g. "text file", "Word document", "folder"). Apparently, LibreOffice has hijacked the file types, so that the only new file types available to me are the 5 LO file types...
I have no idea where this selection is controlled and how to fix it.

This tutorial should help you restore the default items to the 'New' context menu.

Add or Remove Default New Context Menu Items in Windows 10

dalchina · 19 Nov 2022

LibreOffice has hijacked the file types

Yes, it's annoying in this respect as this ocurs when it updates. I limit its updates.

I have some reg files I use to restore these. Not all the ones I like are available from the tutorial.

I also have an easy way to remove unwanted New items. There are some convenient free 3rd party tools e.g.
Shellmenunew, Default Programs Editor.

I also have New menu editor (old, but still valid).

Usually I just have these:

How can I control right-click "new" offerings?-untitled.png

DavidOdden · 21 Nov 2022

I tried the suggestions in the tutorial without luck. Now I at least know more about where ‘new’ items come from, but something is still missing. I want to try something simpler: just focus on restoring the New Word Document (Word 8 a.k.a. 2003) menu item. Looking at the registry with the Registry Editor under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc, the (Default) has no data value, and Content Type has the value ‘application/msword’. Under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc\ShellNew, NullFile has the empty string assigned. There is also HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc\Word.Document.8\ShellNew with FileName set to “winword8.doc” and Nullfile (not NullFile) set to the empty string. A somewhat suspicious somewhat setting is HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc\OpenWithProgIDs which gives the name LibreOffice.Doc the empty string as its value. From all of the examples I have seen, this should work, and it doesn’t.

I did manage to add an item which had not been a context menu before, namely “New .bat file” using the “add new .bat” file from the tutorial, which created HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.bat\ShellNew and NullFile set to the empty string.

Any suggestions for what to do to manually add Word documents back to the context menu?

dalchina · 21 Nov 2022

As you chose not to comment on my post I simply attach the reg files I use for docx and doc.

These may not be fully appropriate for you, so provide these purely for your interest.

Elsewhere on tenforums I fully documented the work I did leading to these and the idea of creating your own template file for the new document created.

The tutorial reg files work for me. Presumably you removed .log after the reg extension
(That's added so they can be downloaded without being blocked).

Do you get the UAC prompt described in the tutorial, or have you disabled UAC?

DavidOdden · 21 Nov 2022

The combined answers led to a solution. Dalchina's code provides a general solution as long as you edit it to match the peculiarities of your own installation (e.g. their being no empty file in the specified logation)