The Main Window contains various menus that give you convenient access to many of SendLink's features.

You may click on an item in one of the menus below to see detailed information on that command. Alternatively, you can check out the Commands section for details on all of the Main Window commands, not all of which have menu items associated with them.

If you click on the File item of the menu bar, the File Menu will drop down. The items on this menu give you access to those commands that affect the overall operation of SendLink.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

If you click on the Server item of the menu bar, the Server Menu will drop down. The items on this menu give you access to commands related to the SendLink File Server. Some of these commands directly affect the configuration or operation of the File Server, while others relate to information that the File Server collects over time.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

If you click on the Window item of the menu bar, the Window Menu will drop down. The items on this menu give you access to commands that control the behavior of the Main Window.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

If you click on the Help item of the menu bar, the Help Menu will drop down. The items on this menu give you access to commands that offer information related to installing and using SendLink.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

If you right-click anywhere within the Session List, you will see its Right-Click Menu. Depending on whether you have clicked on top of an active session or not will determine which commands are active and/or available.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

If you right-click anywhere within the Link List, you will see its Right-Click Menu. Depending on whether or not you have one or more links selected will determine which commands are active and/or available.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

If you select the Send As item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu when a single folder link is selected, you will see this Send As Menu. It contains a list of the types of output that can be generated for a folder link when a remote user activates it. A check mark will appear next to the current selection. To change the selection, click on a different item in the list.

Click on an item in the menu to the right in order to see a detailed explanation of the command that the item activates.

The Session List is immediately below the menu bar. Each line in this list represents an active communication session with a remote host which is downloading a file or folder from your computer using a link.

If the Sent and Progress columns stop incrementing, yet the session remains live, the most likely reason is that the remote user has not yet confirmed the save. If there is a problem with the connection, Windows will terminate the session automatically after a default timeout period. There is usually no reason to intervene manually in either of these cases.

If the remote user cancels the save, the session will terminate immediately. The corresponding line in the Session List will disappear.

If you highlight a session, the corresponding link is highlighted in the Link List. This allows you to see which file or folder is being sent.

This column shows the IP address and port number of the remote host which has connected to your computer. This session would not exist unless the user of that computer has a valid link sent by you, either directly or indirectly.

This column contains the total size, in bytes, to be transferred during the session. Because it is possible for the software requesting the download to request a file in chunks, this size may not be the entire size of the file.

This column contains a running total of the number of bytes sent so far during the session.

This column contains a simple computation of the percentage completion. Note that this is is the percentage completion against the requested size, as shown in the Size Column, and not necessarily the entire file size.

Below the Session List, is the Link List. It contains the currently defined links.

A link is created by dragging a file or folder from Windows Explorer (or equivalent) and dropping it onto the Link List. See the Link List/File Drop command for more details.

To send a link to someone, you simply drag it from the Link List and drop it onto the body of an email message which you are sending them. See the Link List/Link Drag command for more details.

A link is a reference to a file or folder which can be downloaded from your computer by a remote user when the SendLink File Server is running. To prevent the downloading of a particular file or folder, simply delete the links to it. To prevent any file from being downloaded while preserving your links, either stop the File Server using the Server/Stop command, or exit SendLink entirely using the File/Exit command.

Note that the same file or folder can be added to the Link List more than once. Each link acts as a separate permission slip to download a file folder from your computer. When a link is deleted, people can no longer download that file or folder using that link. The connection to the file or folder between your computer and the outside world is broken when a link is deleted. But you can easily create and send another one, either to the same person or someone else. Also, since a file or folder can have more than one link associated with it, it is possible for someone to download a file or folder using a different link, even if you have deleted another link that refers to the same file or folder.

This column is a descriptive name that you may give to a link if you like. A good use for this is to make note of who you have sent the link to. This might help you clean house later on. But feel free to use this anyway you like. You can change this name at any time, both before and after you have emailed a link to someone, without disturbing the connection to the associated file or folder.

The link Name may be changed via the Link List/Rename command.

This column contains the date and time that the link was created. This might prove useful to you in matching up a link to an email that you sent.

This column contains a count of the number of times that you have dropped a link onto another application. Typically, you will be dropping links onto HTML-enabled email messages. But links can be dropped onto any OLE-enabled application, such as a word processor. In any case, this is helpful when trying to determine which links you've sent out and how many times.

This column contains a count of the number of completed sends that have been logged for a link by the File Server. You can use this count to match against the Drop Count to easily determine which files or folders have been downloaded from your computer. When the two counters match, you might want to delete the link to ensure that it can no longer be used.

One thing to note here pertains to the sending of small files. When a file is small enough, the exact size depending on various settings between you and the remote host, it is possible for the entire file to appear to SendLink to have been downloaded, even though the remote user ultimately cancelled the download on their end. This occurs when the file is small enough to have been fully buffered before the user is asked to confirm the save.

This column gives the name and extension of the file or folder associated with the link. To see the full path, click on the line containing the link in order to have the full path displayed in the status bar. This name cannot be changed. If you rename or move a file or folder which has been used as a link, the link will not work when someone tries to retrieve the associated file or folder. It becomes a broken link. If you restore the previous name or location of the file or folder, the link will work again.

This section contains an alphabetical listing of the various commands available from the Main Window. These commands are accessed via various menus, the Session List, the Link List and/or the keyboard. They are sometimes executed automatically, or by accessing a Windows feature to which they have been tied. See the discussion below for details.

Exit SendLink, shutting down the File Server.

This command is accessed by selecting the Exit item on the Menu Bar / File Menu.

Opens the Settings Window.

This command is accessed by selecting the Settings item on the Menu Bar / File Menu. It is also invoked automatically if SendLink detects that a previously configured IP address is no longer available.

Opens the About Window.

This command is accessed by selecting the About item on the Menu Bar / Help Menu.

View SendLink's Table of Contents in your default browser, showing the Release Notes Page.

You may check Release Notes Page for the availability of new product versions. If there is a newer version available than the one you are running, you will see an alert message at the top along with instructions for how to download the latest version. Note that you will only see this alert message if you open the Release Notes Page via this command ... and, naturally, if there is a new version available. If you go to the Release Notes Page directly from your browser, you will get the release notes for latest version of SendLink and, thus, no update notice even if one is available. It's magic!

This command is accessed by selecting the Contents item on the Menu Bar / Help Menu.

View SendLink's Register page in your default browser. If you have found SendLink useful, we ask that you help support the cause by purchasing a User License. If not, give us a shout and tell us why not. We're trying to make the best product we can and welcome your input.

This command is accessed by selecting the Register item on the Menu Bar / Help Menu.

The Version Command allows you to manually check for a new version of SendLink.

If there is a new version available when the command is invoked, you will be given the opportunity to view the Release Notes Page for the new version. Simply answer Yes or No accordingly. When you access the release notes from SendLink and there is a new version available, there will be a download link near the top of the page that you may use to get the new version.

If there is not a new version of SendLink available, simply acknowledge the message informing you of this by pressing the OK button.

This command is accessed by selecting the Version item on the Menu Bar / Help Menu.

You may sort the Link List on any column by clicking on the header located at the top of each column. When you press a different column header, the current sort order – ascending or descending – is preserved. This is slightly different than standard Windows behavior, which always sorts a new column selection in ascending order. If you press the current sort column again, then the sort order reverses.

The arrow in the column header indicates the sort order, with an up arrow for ascending and a down arrow for descending, following the standard Windows convention.

This command may be used as an alternative to the link dragging action from the Link List described in the Link List/Link Drag command. At the point that you have selected the links that you want to share, you would activate this command to place a copy of the selected links into the Windows Clipboard instead of dragging them from the Link List. The equivalent of the dropping action is the email program's Paste command. The effect of this sequence of actions is exactly the same as if you had used the drag-and-drop procedure.

You can activate this command by selecting the Copy item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu, or by pressing the Ctrl-C key combination while the input focus is set to the Link List.

This command is only available when there is at least one link selected in the Link List.

This command may be used as an alternative to the Link List/File Drop command, in order to create new links in the Link List via the Windows Clipboard instead of using drag-and-drop.

You can activate this command by selecting the Paste item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu, or by pressing the Ctrl-V key combination while the input focus is set to the Link List.

This command is available only when you have copied file names into the Windows Clipboard from Windows Explorer, or equivalent. Examples of such equivlents are the standard Windows Open and Save As dialog boxes used by the vast majority of applications. If you copy a file or folder to the clipboard from one of these, it will be available for pasting via this command.

Use this command to delete the selected links. You will be prompted for yes/no confirmation before the deletion takes place.

Once a link is deleted, remote users will no longer be able to download the associated file or folder from you unless you send them another link. Deleted links become broken links.

You may delete multiple links at the same time by using standard Windows multiple-selection procedures before executing this command.

You can activate this command by selecting the Delete? item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu. Another way to activate this command is to press the Del key while the input focus is set to the Link List.

This command is only available when there is at least one link selected in the Link List.

Dropping files or folders onto the Link List is the way that you create links. Typically, you will do this from the Windows Explorer, but SendLink is drop-compatible with any application that emulates the drag-and-drop mechanism used by Windows Explorer, including standard Windows Open and Save As dialog boxes.

You may drop one file or folder at a time, or more than one using standard Windows multiple-selection techniques.

New links are added to the end of the Link List. To put the new links into sorted order, just use the Link List / Column Sort command.

To send a link to someone, you simply drag it from the Link List and drop it onto the body of an email message which you are sending them. To send more than one link at a time, use standard Windows multiple selection techniques to select the links you wish to send, then drag them all simultaneously onto the body of the email.

What you will see upon completion of a link drag operation depends on the application that you are dropping these links onto.

If you have dragged the links onto an HTML-enabled application, you will get a powered by SendLink heading and a comma-separated list of clickable links underneath. To avoid confusion with any other text which you may already have in your email, we recommend starting a new paragraph and dropping the links at the beginning of that paragraph. Once dropped into your email, you may naturally continue to edit the message. You must, however, be sure not to change the properties of the anchor tags that we generate; if this happens, the  links will not operate correctly. If you are not sure what this means, you should probably just leave our portion of the message alone.

On the receiving end of an HTML file-sharing email, the remote user simply clicks on a link to begin downloading. If the link they click on is a file link, the download of the associated file will begin immediately. If the link is a folder link, they will be shown a folder index in their web browser containing a list of the file links that they can use to download the individual files from that folder.

If you have dragged the links onto a text-only email message, you will get an ugly-looking text version of the links that would have otherwise been hidden behind the scenes during an HTML-based drop, one link per line. Each of these text-mode links represents the guts of what makes it possible to download a file or folder from SendLink through the Internet.

On the receiving end of a text-only file-sharing email message, remote users will need to do one of two things to download files or folders from you, depending on the email client they are using. If they are using an email client such as Outlook Express, there is a very good chance that they will only need to click on these ugly links to initiate a download, as if they were regular ... pretty ... HTML links. This is because Outlook Express scans messages before displaying them, looking for webby things, then converts them to anchor tags on the fly. If the remote user's email client does not do this, they need only copy the ugly link text and paste it into their web browser's (Internet Explorer for most people) address control and then press the Enter key to initiate the download. From that point on, it will be as if the remote user clicked on a link in an HTML email message, as described above.

This command performs an Open on the file associated with a file link in exactly the same way that using the Open right-click command from Windows Explorer would.

This command is intended as a convenience to you in refreshing your memory of what a particular link refers to. You could also use this command as a simple application launcher.

One way to activate this command is by selecting the Open File item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu. Another way is to double-click on a file link in the Link List.

This command is available when there is precisely one file link selected in the Link List. Otherwise, it is grayed out.

This command performs an Open on the folder associated with a link. Unless you have configured your system differently, this results in viewing that folder in Windows Explorer. If the selected link is a file link, the open is performed on the folder that the file is contained in. If the selected link is a folder link, the open is performed on the folder itself.

You may find this command a convenient way to view the files in a folder that you are sharing via a folder link. When viewing the containing folder of a file link, it may be helpful to you to see what other files are in the same folder as the shared file so you can determine if you want to share any of those individual files too.

This command is activated by selecting Open Folder from the Link List / Right-Click Menu. Another way is to double-click on a folder link in the Link List.

This command is available when there is precisely one link selected in the Link List. Otherwise it is grayed out.

Use this command to open the Password Window in order to manage the password property of the currently selected links in the Link List.

Before activating this command, use standard Windows multiple-select techniques to highlight one or more links whose password you wish to change. The password for the link with the input focus at the time the command is activated supplies the default value to the Password Window. Note that this password may or may not be the same for other selected links. Regardless, whatever action you take from the Password Window will apply uniformly to the password property of all the selected links.

Any link that you assign a password property to subsequently requires that remote users authenticate themselves to SendLink in order to gain access to the file or folder associated with the password-protected link. They do that by entering the correct password when prompted to do so by their Web browser. Note that passwords are case-sensitive and that any leading, embedded and trailing spaces are considered significant. In short, passwords must be entered by the remote user exactly the way you enter them in the Password Window.

If you remove the password property for a previously password-protected link, remote users will subsequently no longer need to authenticate themselves to SendLink prior to being able to download the associated file or folder.

This command is activated by selecting the Password... item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu.

Use this command to rename a link. Simply type in the new name and press the Enter key to accept the change. To cancel the name change, simply press the Esc key.

This command is accessed by pressing the F2 key while the target link is highlighted in the Link List, or by selecting the Rename item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu.

Use this command in order to tell SendLink to generate a folder index when a remote user clicks on a folder link that you have sent them.

This command is accessed by selecting the Index item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu / Send As Menu.

Use this command in order to tell SendLink to generate a slideshow when a remote user clicks on a folder link that you have sent them.

This command is accessed by selecting the SlideShow item from the Link List / Right-Click Menu / Send As Menu.

SendLink is integrated into the Windows Send To Menu. When you start SendLink, it adds itself into the Windows Send To Menu; when you exit SendLink, it automatically removes itself. The net result of this is that you have access to the Send To Command while SendLink is running.

Using the Send To Command is easy. In Windows Explorer, select the files and folders that you wish to create links for. Then right-click somewhere on your selection, causing a menu to appear. From this menu, select the Send To item. That will cause another menu to open, containing a list of the applications to which you can send the selection. Select the SendLink item.

Having done that, the selected files and folders have been turned into links as if you had used the Link List / File Drop Command, and those links have been copied to the Windows Clipboard as if you had used the Link List / Copy Command. You can then paste them into your email as you normally would.

The AutoConfiguration Command simplifies the process of setting up SendLink by automating some of the steps that would otherwise need to be performed manually.

If the SendLink host has a direct connection to the Internet, AutoConfiguration detects this and automatically selects the external, routable IP address for use by the SendLink File Server. It also clears the contents of the Settings Window / Server Tab / Host Name Field in this case.

If AutoConfiguration, on the other hand, detects that the SendLink host is accessing the Internet via an Internet gateway — some combination of a router, firewall and/or proxy server — it instead selects the first non-routable IP address for use by the File Server, plugs the external IP address of your Internet gateway into the Host Name Field, and then alerts you to the possible need to enable port forwarding on your router in order to complete the configuration process.

Next, a random port number is generated for the the Port Field. If there is already a port number defined, AutoConfiguration will skip this step and not generate a new port number value.

At each step, AutoConfiguration displays a status message when it takes an action. If all you see when you activate AutoConfiguration is the Starting automatic configuration... message, followed by the Automatic configuration complete message, then you may infer from this that AutoConfiguration did not deem it necessary to change your configuration.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Host Name Field is subject to change each time you use this command. Because of this, if you have obtained a registered host name from a DNS service and are using that in the Host Name Field, you may not want to use the AutoConfiguration command since you will have to reenter that setting after it completes. The good news is that, with a registered host name specified in the Host Name Field, you really don't need to use it.

AutoConfiguration runs automatically the first time you run SendLink. Thereafter, you may access it via the AutoConfiguration item of the Menu Bar / Server Menu. To make this command available, first use the Server / Stop Command. When it has completed, use the Server / Start Command to start the File Server with the updated settings.

This command clears the existing Send Log.

Note that there is no operating performance penalty to SendLink in allowing the Send Log to continue to capture downloading activity. Thus, this command need only be used whenever you feel the Send Log has gotten out of hand from a viewing perspective.

This command is accessed by selecting the Clear Send Log? item on the Menu Bar / Server Menu.

Use this command to stop and then immediately start the File Server.

You may access this command by selecting the Restart item on the Menu Bar / Server Menu.

This command is only available if the File Server is currently running.

Use this command to start the File Server.

You may access this command by selecting the Start item on the Menu Bar / Server Menu.

This command is only available if the File Server is currently stopped.

Use this command to stop the File Server. Any remote users who attempt to download files or folders from you while the File Server is stopped will get an error message.

You may access this command by selecting the Stop item on the Menu Bar / Server Menu.

This command is only active if the File Server is currently running.

View the Send Log in your default browser.

This command is accessed by selecting the View Send Log... item on the Menu Bar / Server Menu.

Use this command to abort the selected communication session between your computer and a remote user. Typically, you will use this command to clear out a connection which is not working before Windows has gotten around to killing it off on a timeout error. But you can also use it to change your mind about sharing a file or folder while it is happening.

You access this command by selecting Abort from the Session List / Right-Click Menu. An alternative way to access this command is to press the Del Key.

This command is only available when the input focus is in the Session List and there is a session selected.

Use this command to toggle the state of AutoHide Mode.

This command is accessed by selecting the AutoHide item on the Menu Bar / Window Menu. When the menu item is checked, AutoHide Mode is enabled.

This command dismisses the Main Window directly to the Windows System Tray, without any animation effect. SendLink's File Server continues to operate after this command is used. If you wish to stop the File Server, you may use the Server/Stop command. Or you can exit SendLink entirely via the File/Exit command.

This command is accessed by pressing the Alt-F4 key combination. It is also accessible by clicking on the standard close window icon located in the upper-right of the Main Window.

Use this command to toggle the state of Docking Mode.

This command is accessed by selecting the Dockable item on the Menu Bar / Window Menu. When the menu item is checked, Docking Mode is enabled.

This command dismisses the Main Window using an animation effect. If the Main Window is docked, it slides off the screen in the direction of the edge or edges it is docked to. Otherwise, it fades out. See AutoHide Mode for more info. We love this. Check it out.

This command is accessed by pressing the Esc key. If AutoHide Mode is enabled, then this command will execute automatically if the mouse ventures off the Main Window for more than a few seconds.