DragDropConfirm Advanced Instructions
Silent Install
From the command line, enter in the installer exe with /S at the end. Note that the /S is case sensitive, and /s will not work.
dragdropconfirm_installer.exe /S
Customize The Text
You can create registry entries to customize the text displayed on the messagebox. The location of the registry key is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DragDropConfirm
Note that if you are on a 32 bit machine, this key will already exist, and will have an Install_Dir value. If you are on 64 bit, you will have to create the key. The Install_Dir value will be in a key in the location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\DragDropConfirm
So the keys you can create are:
| Value Name | Type | Default Data |
| AskTitle | REG_SZ | Hold up there… |
| AskDescription | REG_SZ | Are you sure you want to move the file(s) or folder(s)? |
| ItemText | REG_SZ | &Move here |
| ShowDefaultText | REG_DWORD | 0 |
The AskTitle and AskDescription keys are obviously for customizing the text in the prompt. More about the other two below…
Note that if you are on a 64-bit machine and you want to add these values, you will need to add them in both locations mentioned above. This is because 64 bit Windows uses the 64-bit dll in most cases which reads the non-Wow6432Node location, but occasionally uses the 32-bit dll which will access the other.
So to summarize, here are the registry keys you will be creating/editing:
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DragDropConfirm | Default on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows |
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\DragDropConfirm | 64-bit only when emulating 32-bit programs |
Language Customization
This is where the other two registry values come in handy: ItemText and ShowDefaultText. If you are not on an English edition of Windows, the confirmation prompt will most likely not work. This is because it looks for the ItemText value to compare to what is the current default menu item value. On English Windows, this is &Move here.
The first thing you will want to do is find out what the real value is on your Windows copy. You can easily do this by creating the ShowDefaultText value, and setting it to 1. When that key is set and equal to 1 (or any non-zero value really) it will display a dialog upon a drag and drop action, displaying whatever is the current default item value. If you are doing a move operation, it will be the value you want.
Now once you know the value, create an ItemText value and set its data to that string you saw. If all goes well, the confirmation prompt should now be working.
Note: for some reason I made it so that if the ItemText value exists, it will not check the ShowDefaultText value and therefore will not show the default value in a messagebox, even if the ItemText is the wrong value. Be sure the ItemText value does not exist if you are trying to retrieve the data you need to enter in that.
Hello!
This program is what I was looking for! Thanks.
It’s great that the standard choice is “cancel”!
3 thoughts:
1. The dialog description does not show which file or folder will be moved.
It would be helpful to know upon appearing of the dialog, which items should be moved, it could happen you clicked the wrong 100GB folder to move on the other hard drive.
2. some Windows version does offer to switch the GUI language in real time between other installed localizations. My system does not so atm, but I will reinstall my system to another one which is capable of this feature.
-> What will happen to the “ItemText” which could be defined in language X, now you switch to another language Z – will the confirmation dialog appear? If not you had to change this value to perform with the other localization.
3. I know there is a delete confirmation dialog already in Windows. But the standard choice is “yes” (delete the item(s)) – this is bad.
I want to suggest to support the delete command on files and folders too, or manipulate the existing to be able to define “no” as standard choice.
I love this little app. IDK if this is still supported, but I’d love to see your confirmation box be “always on top”. Sometimes I can’t find the confirmation-box when I’m dragging and dropping a file from the window I’m in, and when there are multiple windows open, cluttering my desktop, many times your confirm box ends up behind the window I’m dragging the file from, locking that window from moving, and the only way to free that window, is to mouse click at various points on my desktop until the confirm box appears, then when I’ve OK the move, it will unlocked the window to move again.
Hi, I really want to use your tool but after installation, it does nothing at all.
I’m using Win 8.1 btw.
I tried to register the 2 dlls manually with admin cmd.exe but it still doesn’t work.
After registration, should the dll appear as Services ? (and if it would, under which name/description ?)
I really need to make it work as I recently lost files due to drag from drive to same drive doing a move while I wanted a copy…
Thanks
Oh and I use a french win8.1 install btw …
Well, I managed to make it work as intended : just created a DragDropConfirm_French_x64.reg registry file containing
”
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\DragDropConfirm]
“Install_Dir”=”C:\\Mes Logiciels\\Systeme\\DragDropConfirm”
“AskTitle”=”Hmmmm …”
“AskDescription”=”Etes vous certain de vouloir déplacer le(s) fichier(s) ici ?”
“ItemText”=”&Déplacer ici”
“ShowDefaultText”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DragDropConfirm]
“AskTitle”=”Hmmmm …”
“AskDescription”=”Etes vous certain de vouloir déplacer le(s) fichier(s) ici ?”
“ItemText”=”&Déplacer ici”
“ShowDefaultText”=dword:00000000
”
With another foreign language, one must change “&Déplacer ici” with whatever it should (but how can we find what we should put in there?…)
Hoping it will be a good and clear answer to anyone starting with the same issue…
Thanks a lot for this very helpful tool !!!
Hello,
Very nice soft that works great (fucking windows bastards that have created a left click and a right click version but no registry key to transform the left click behaviour to the right click version).
By the way I will need a fork : I am on a French machine so everything works well if I set the ‘ItemText’ key to “&Déplacer ici” BUT I run a special software (Solidworks EPDM) that use the language set in the EPDM software for the windows created by that software. So all my system is french but those EPDM explorer Windows where the language setting is English.
So I will need the software to be modified to accept different values for the ‘ItemText’ , you could create ‘Item text 2’, ‘item text3’… for instance or enter a separation character in the item text field.
It will then turn your software in an universal software whatever the langages are (it may also help people that have several account on the same machine with different languages).
Thanks for your support.
No need the fork anymore for myself (but may still be usefull for user working with different languages on the same machine).
The EPDM explorer windows seems to be a very modified version of windows explorer : so that nice soft does not work with EPDM (which is a shame as a change in EPDM treeview means a lot of changes in the EPDM SQL database to update references).
Anyway to make a hotkey you can hold so that you can disable the program say if you were moving many files around?
Just edit the ItemText registry key and enter something that is not what your windows show up for the ‘move here’ action. It will prevent the soft from working
Hi, is it possible to modify something so that I always get the full options menu even though I use the left button to drag? The menu is so nice, it’s a bit of a shame to have to use the right button for that
Great software though!
Thanks to the Advanced instructions, which are not very clear … I found the solution and now it works under Windows 7 64 bits in french language.
To make the installation easier I have developped an installer which creates all required entries in the registry.
Daniel POT
Hi,
Could you please explain what you did exactly to get it running on a French system?
We tried it for hours but could not find out how to run it on a German Windows…
Thx, JJ
Hello,
About your question about how to exercize DragDropConfirm application on a non US-English speaking Windows operating system I suggest you send me a direct e-mail so I can send you all what I have done to run this nice sofware under a french speaking Windows operating system.
Regards
Daniel POT
I don’t have your address, but please, send the information to johannes.jensen@lystegn.eu. Many thanks beforehand
Hi
Can you scare with me your solution to install it on a frencher Windows 7
Thank you
Very usefull utility but I could not make it to run properly. Once installed I found the DragDropConfirm registry key entry, there is the DragDropConfirm_32.dll library installed under C:\Program Files directory. But even after a reboot of the system (Windows 32 bits XP) there is no change in the drag and drop behaviour: none confirmation dialog box is displayes. Is there any complementary action to perform after the installtion to make so it works properly ?
Thank you by advance for your answer
Regards
Daniel POT
Okay, it has to do with the language. But I can’t find the registry keys! Even on the machine on which DragDropConfirm actually works, there is no HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/DragDropConfirm. I can’t even find a key containing ShowDefaultText…
Is this supposed to work on Server 2012 R2? I’m trying to test it on an RDS server and it doesn’t appear to be working at all. I may be missing something, but I added the 64-bit and 32-bit reg entries.
Any ideas?
Hi!
Great utility you have here! It works very well in our organization where we want to prevent people from accidentally moving a folder on our network.
Do you happen to know if there’s a similar utility available for MacOS? We have a few users that do not use Windows and would like to implement the same functionality but I haven’t been able to find anything online so far. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
Will