Sometimes it’s better to be sure of what will happen when you’re dragging files around, plus there’s a nice shortcut for extracting files that engages when you use the lesser known right drag. Check this out.
Try this next time you want to unpack a zip file (or now in Windows 11, almost any other compressed format): Drag the zip file with your right mouse button and drop it where you want to extract the files. You’ll see a choice appear when you drop. Choose Extract from that list of choices, and the Extraction location in the wizard will already be filled out with the location you dropped it on, whether that be inside or on top of any other folder or desktop.
To put it simply, just drag and drop the usual way, but do it with your right mouse button to unlock the magic.
The bold text choice you see on the menu is what would have happened if you had merely “regularly” dragged and dropped to that location using your left mouse button.
In addition to prefilling the extraction wizard1, this also provides total confidence when you drag-and-drop files. Power users might just know intuitively that dragging to a place on the same drive results in a move, while dragging to another drive results in a copy. Super savvy users have even experimented with holding various modifier keys while dragging to see what they would perform. But if you drag with your right mouse button, you can always be absolutely sure.
PS. If you’re left-handed, you may have your mouse buttons swapped. Windows usually (but not always) refers to these two buttons as the primary and secondary buttons to avoid the semantics, but since the overwhelming majority of the users (even left-handed ones) tend to use the left mouse button for a regular primary click, I’ve stuck with referring to it by directionality. I mean no disrespect. Some of my best friends are left-handed.
1Do we still call it a wizard?
