To encrypt a file/folder in Windows, you need to right click on it, click “properties”, then click on the “Advanced” button and finally, you need to check the “Encrypt” checkbox. This long and time consuming way can be replaced by a shorter way of encrypting/decrypting files and folders from right click context menu.

Enabling Encrypt/Decrypt in right click context menu is easy and requires a simple registry hack. To enable Encrypt/Decrypt in right click context menu, follow the given steps:

1. Open Notepad (not WordPad)

2. Copy and paste the following string into the notepad file you just opened:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
“EncryptionContextMenu”=dword:00000001

3. Remove both double quotes you copied and type double quotes manually. It is so because double quotes copied from a webpage is different from that typed manually.

4. Save the notepad file as Encrypt.reg” with Save as type is “All Files”.

5. Double click the registry file, continue with UAC prompt and click OK when asked to confirm the changes.

Once you have done the above mentioned 6 steps, you will be able to right click on a file/folder and select Encrypt/Decrypt from the right click context menu.