Yes. I have always got there the same way as Jblount. The right click hack is fine though, but not totally needed. If you lose associates in any way, you can also select "open with" and rechoose notepad (or wordpad) It will then be automatically reassociated.
Ok.. I'll throw you guys a bone and give you a nice ADVANCED tip since everyone seems to be so intrested in notepad.
Click "Start" and type in "Folder" hit enter then go to "View" and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types" -- while you are there you may want to select "Show hidden files and folders" AND scroll down and select "use check boxes to select items" This cool feature will allow you to easily tag multiple files in a directory so that you apply an action to all of them at once. It even works when you ftp into a website.
ADVANCED tip: If you ever want to just look inside a file that is not a .txt or .doc file... such as a .dat file and poke around to see what you can identify (for example url's)... simply add .txt to the file name and it will load in notepad (or whatever program you associated with text files.) Just remove the .txt after you finish and NEVER save any modifications done with a text editor. Here is a specific example of the above trick: Press winkey + E and when Windows Explorer loads, weave an wobble your way to: the Users folder and search for index.dat Pick one that in an active user's account and copy and paste it somewhere else. Slide on over to "somewhere else" and press F2 and add .txt (to the index.dat file you copied) then click it twice. When it opens in Notepad you can see a long list of urls the user has visited. Few (if any) windows washer programs clean this .dat file because it is protected by several methods... like security locks, sharing violation, etc. but you can copy it then polk around inside with a simple text editor.... and find out your WIFE is looking for penis enlargment pills to slip into your coffee.
I,ll stick to my own way, but it does look as though the link given in the first post woulod certainly be quicker than the long path you suggest. But for the nervous who don't like to mess with the registry, here is the automatic reg hack. It has been around since XP. I,ve also put in the hack to remove it again, but hopefully there would be no reason to do that?
You guys are working too hard to do simple things.. just download sendtotoys
a href=http://www.gabrieleponti.com/downloads/sendtotoys.exe
the sendto menu has a lot more useful options after sendtotoys runs... AND you have an option in your righ click menu to ADD to or REMOVE from sendto menu