Add Beyond compare to Explorer's right click

Question

I have been using Beyond Compare 3 in my previous company and it comes in handy every time I need to compare files/folders. Right-clicking on the file would open up BC's option to compare it against another file . I recently installed BC 3 in my new PC. Very strange is that I'm not getting the BC default option on right-clicking of file.

Can someone guide on this?

Answer 1

I can confirm that the article mentioned in the above comments works as expected. I am using a machine with Windows 7 64-bit.

To enable the shell extension after installation:

• Select Tools | Options and pick the Startup tab.
• In the Explorer Integration group, enable the Include Beyond Compare in Explorer context menu option.

The Include Beyond Compare in Explorer context menu check box isn't available if you selected Create portable install when you installed Beyond Compare. To enable it, install Beyond Compare again and select Install for all users or Install for current user.

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As a side note, I will mention that this right-click behavior is buggy in Beyond Compare 3. (If you have right-click options, everything is great, but if you do not have any of the right-click options, good luck getting them to show up.) We had BC 3 installed on several machines with Windows 7 32-bit, and myself and several co-workers could not get the Compare or Select Left File for Compare options to show up in the right-click menu. We contacted support, we installed their patch, nothing worked. Other co-workers with similar machines were not affected by the issue for some reason. The issue was never actually resolved; eventually our laptops were replaced, and we have not had the problem since then.

Answer 2

Make sure you're using the official Beyond Compare 3.3.13 installer. If you're using a custom installer provided by your company, it's possible it didn't install the shell extension correctly.

To change from a custom installer to an official installer, uninstall it, reboot your computer, then install using the official installer.

Version 3.3.13 download page: http://www.scootersoftware.com/download.php?zz=dl3_en