Windows Vista has a built in file encryption utility. If you use this utility quite frequently, you may want to add this option to the contextual menu (the menu that opens on right-clicking a file). This would make it quite easy to encrypt or decrypt your files rather than using the file properties dialog box. To add the encrypt option to your context menu,
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Click ‘Start’ and type ‘regedit’.
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Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced’.
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Right-click on the right pane and select ‘New > DWORD 32 bit Value’.
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Name the new key as ‘EncryptionContextMenu’.
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Once the key is created, double-click it and enter the integer ‘1’ in the ‘Value data’ field.
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Close the registry editor.
Now whenever you right click a file, you’ll find the ‘Encrypt’ option in the contextual menu. You can easily encrypt and decrypt files using this feature.