Chances are you have one or more documents that you routinely print. They might include resumes, forms, directions and so on. In situations where I know I'm not going to be editing the documents, but only need to print them, I use a printer shortcut I've added to my Send To menu.

Although the feature isn't advertised, Windows allows you to add all sorts of shortcuts to the Send To menu. If you're not familiar with this menu, open Windows Explorer and right-click on any file. You should see a shortcut menu appear labeled Send To. When you select this option, a new menu appears with various items depending on your system. All the items that display on this menu are found in a special folder called SendTo. This is where I added my printer shortcut.

Now, when I need to print one document, I simply right-click, select Send To, and my printer. For a Word document, the system briefly opens Word, loads my document, prints it and closes the application.

To add your printer to the Send To menu,

1. Click your Start button

2. Click Run

3. In the Run dialog, type sendto (no quotes). This opens your Send To folder.

4. Click Start, Control Panel, Printers and Faxes

5. Create a shortcut for the printer by right clicking its name and selecting Create Shortcut

6. Click Yes when prompted to place the shortcut on desktop

7. Click the close button [X] to close the Printers and Faxes folder

8. Drag or copy this new printer shortcut from your desktop to your Send To folder

9. Highlight the new printer and press F2

10. Rename to remove the shortcut text

11. Close the SendTo folder.

You may add other devices or programs to the SendTo folder in the same fashion. For example, you may want to add items for an external drives or a program such as Notepad.