I'm not a Windows programmer so I can only guess that there is no possibility for UltraCompare to force the Windows Explorer to unselect the current selection. But you can simply press key F5 (= View - Refresh) in Windows Explorer to force a directory reread which also unselects everything.
Best regards from an UC/UE/UES for Windows user from Austria
F5 doesn't clear the "to be compared" selections in the context menu, at least not on my XP machine. However, after a compare action (compare any two/three files, close UC), the context menu is cleared.
Still, it would be a nice touch to have the option to clear the context menu for UC manually...I have already contacted support about this, and they said they'd look into it...
Ah, now I have understand what's the problem, thanks Tim.
Yes, you are right. When closing all files in UltraCompare also the "Load in ..." entries in the context menu should be cleared automatically and a manual clear item within the context menu for the "Load in ..." entries would be also really helpful for Windows Explorer users.
I personally use Total Commander and have integrated UltraCompare into its toolbar with appropriate parameters. So it was new for me how the context menu really works and "chas" has not explained enough what is his problem.
Best regards from an UC/UE/UES for Windows user from Austria
This has been driving me crazy, almost enough to go back to using Beyond Compare...until I figured out how to get around this.
If your problem is the same as mine, the worst thing about it remembering things is the third frame. This is especially bad when you're comparing folders, and even worse when it's recursively. That third unwanted compare kills the processing time.
While comparing three files is great, I almost never actually use it. Therefore, it would drive me crazy that the third frame in the context menu remembered its previous file.
I searched through the registry and found this little gem that turns off 3rd frame functionality:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IDM Computer Solutions\UltraCompare Pro 3\UltraCompare\Settings]
"Mode". This was set to 3, which I assume means three frame mode. I changed this to two and now 3rd frame mode is disabled, and you can safely ignore whatever is in the third frame of the context menu.
Of course the drawback is not being able to compare 3 files, but I rarely do that so it's not a big loss, and easy enough to turn back on.
I did double check that when using the context menu, it is only the items in the 1st and 2nd frames that are used.
Oh man, I was so wrong above. The Mode refers to the Text/Binary/Folder mode. It only ignored the 3rd frame in the context menu because you can't have 3 way binary compares...or whatever Mode 3 was. Bah.
I don't know why you set the mode in the registry and not in menu Mode where you can select between Text Mode and 3-Way Text Mode, Binary (fast) Mode and Binary (smart) Mode, Folder Mode and 3-Way Folder Mode. The last used mode is always remembered on exit.
And it is also possible to delete the recently used files/folders from within UltraCompare Professional when the file/folder does not exist anymore. Just select an entry from the recent list of any frame and when it does not exist anymore you will be asked to delete it from the recent list or not.
Best regards from an UC/UE/UES for Windows user from Austria
I guess his problem is that he has three unwanted items in the UC Explorer context menu, changes two of those to the correct ones and then starts the compare which of course will be very slow when the third item is compared to the totally unrelated other items. And since you can't specify from the context menu that you don't want the three-way compare, you have to wait until UC finishes the unwanted compare. Aborting the compare also deletes the compare action, so you can't switch off three-way in UC and re-run the compare action. Sounds rather complicated, doesn't it?
However, I think that IDM have improved context menu handling in UC 5.00a, and here's what I do if I have that problem:
Let's assume that at the beginning, the UC context menu is filled with three unwanted items (remember that everytime you right-click something, the UC context menu automatically remembers this item until it's full).
So the UC context menu looks something like
Load in first frame: You have selected C:\blah1.txt
Load in first frame: You have selected C:\blah2.txt
Load in first frame: You have selected C:\blah3.txt
Run UltraCompare
Now you do the following:
1. Right-click the first file/folder you want to compare and select "Run UltraCompare/Load in first frame". This will clear the current selection for "Load in first frame".
2. Right-click the same file/folder again without selecting anything in the context menu. This will enter it in the now-empty first slot.
3. Right-click the second file/folder and select "Run UltraCompare/Load in second frame". This clears the entry for the second frame.
4. Right-click it again (this enters it into the second slot) and select "Run UltraCompare/Load in third frame". This clears the entry for the third frame.
5. Right-click it yet again and select "Run UltraCompare/Run UltraCompare".
In essence, the behavior of the UC context menu seems to be:
1. On any right-click, fill the first empty slot in the UC context menu if there is one, and if the file is not found in one of the other slots. Otherwise, do nothing.
2. If the user selects a slot that is filled, clear that slot.
If you select multiple files before right-clicking, it will try to fill as many slots as there are available.
pietzcker is correct. I thought I was being clever and disabling the third frame altogether, but what I realized I was doing later was just changing the mode to binary, which indirectly disables the third frame in the context menu.
I am going to go back to using Beyond Compare until this UC context menu thing is straightened out.
In BC, you can highlight two files and with one context menu click, compare them. This is what I am doing 99% of the time...actually, 100% of the time as I've not yet compared 3 different files, and I constantly do text compares every day.
We really need to be able to do that, plus disable the third frame in the context menu if we want.
Hopefully these types of things can be done in UC soon. I've bought the product, but I think I've bought BC too, and right now I've got to use that due to this context menu thing.
I'd love to come back to UC soon, so please tweak the context menu behavior!
