Drag-and-Drop Tricks

I wrote about some shortcut keys a while back.

Now for some drag-and-drop tricks I've learned in windows.

Have you ever wanted to drag something from one window to another application, but the other application is hidden? Well there are a few of tricks to do this.

Of course you can size both windows to allow seeing the edge of the drop-to window, but that can be clumsy, and doesn't always work so well. So there are a couple of other ways I've learned to cheat this situation.

The first one I learned is the start-bar-two-step.
In the Start-bar-two-step, your start dragging a file or files down to the application you want on the start bar. But don't release on the start bar! If you do, you will only get an error that you can't drop on the start bar. Keep holding your mouse button down and leave the cursor on the application in the start bar for a few moments. Then the application will be pulled to the front of the window, and you can move your mouse up and drop in the files.
Of course on windows XP, you might have the application grouping. Then it becomes a three-step. Hover over the application collection, wait for it to pop up as if you had clicked on it, then go up and click on the specific version of the application you want to drop on.

The two-step and three-step is how I've done it for ages. But I just discovered a new one by accident. Drag-and-tab.

It seems you can do the hold drag with alt-tab. The only real trick is that you have to convince windows that you want to start dragging the files. Do this by clicking on the file or files you want to drag-and-drop, then drag them just enough so windows thinks you want to drag-and-drop them in the current window. You may see the cursor change, or an shaded copy of the icon(s) your are copying, as an indicator that the drag-and-drop has started. Then press and hold the alt key (while still holding the mouse key with the other hand) and press the tab button until you find the application you want. (Let go of the alt key now.) Now position the mouse (if you even need to move it at all) and let go of the mouse button to drop
the file in the application. Okay, it sounds complex, but it is pretty fast and easy. I use it to start and email, the drag-and-drop a few pictures to an email.

Another drag-and-drop trick. The common dialog file save box is usually just like windows explorer (for the most of you who just went 'huh?', I explain it better in a second). When you do a save-as in many applications, it comes up with a new box specifically to save the file. This save box is a common bit of code in windows, called by most application. This way saving a file works mostly the same from application to application. But you can do interesting things from this save-as box. You can drag-and-drop from it, and you can right click on files and folders.

So for instance, I might create a small HTML web file on my hard drive with notepad. But if I want to see it in Internet Explorer, I might open Windows Explorer and drill down to the right folder, then double-click on the file. But Sometimes I will cheat: I will do another save-as (alt-F, A) and bring up the save-as dialog box. Then I will go to the file I've already saved, and right-click on the file. Then I will select Open, instead of the default (bolded) Save option. This will bring up the HTML file in my default web browser.
The only thing to remember is that you have to go back to the application that you did the save-as in, and cancel the save-as box.

This technique can also be good if you are not sure where you saved a file to. You can do a save as to fine the folder, or just the specific file you just saved.

Another notepad hint: if you want to save a file without a dot txt (".txt") extension, change the 'Save as type:' to 'All Files'. This will keep notepad from adding the .txt extension.

So give the tricks a shot, and let me know how it works for you!

Good luck with the start-bar-two-step (or start-bar-drag-and-hover) and the drag-and-tab.