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I noticed that my menus have started to open to the left for most applications. I suspect my son accidentally changes something, but I don't know what.

How can I make them open up to the right?

Opening to the left:

To the left

Opening to the right:

To the right

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From the screenshot it looks like the application is opened at the right side of the screen, as it is unable to expand to the right it expands to the left. Could that be possible? What happens when you have Notepad2 maximized and open the File / Edit / View menu? – Tom Wijsman Mar 1 '12 at 19:08
2  
Well, that is expected behavior? A full screen screenshot could help remove any confusion. – Tom Wijsman Mar 1 '12 at 19:11
2  
If I'm understanding you correctly I have to agree. This is expected behavior. It opens to the left if and only if there's not room for it to open to the right. The screenshot is very misleading if there IS in fact room to the right. – Shinrai Mar 1 '12 at 19:13
@Synetech - I disagree, it doesn't look like there's any room at all to me. I don't know what the distinction is, but I see a lot of applications where it insists on trying to be justified with the menu dropdown, so this isn't unusual to me. Now, if this is happening even when it's maximized, THAT'S unusual. – Shinrai Mar 1 '12 at 19:15
I’m not one to nag people about trying Google first, but this was extremely easy to fix. The very first and second search results would have solved it (especially for a “software engineer by hobby and trade”). – Synetech Mar 1 '12 at 19:22
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1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote accepted

This setting is related to the Tablet PC Components. It looks like your menus have been set to left-handed. You can change it back to right-handed by setting the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]
"MenuDropAlignment"="0"
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…and tell your son to be more careful. ;-) – Synetech Mar 1 '12 at 19:18
that fixes it, but my son is 3. I doubt he edited the registry, and I know I didn't :) I wonder if some tablet setting got switched by default when I plugged in my bamboo writing tablet – Joe Mar 1 '12 at 19:25
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@Joe Most likely, he curiously/haphazardly clicked around in the tablet settings and changed it. But I like the idea of a 3 year old computer genius a little more. :P – iglvzx Mar 1 '12 at 19:28
as do I...... :) – Joe Mar 1 '12 at 19:33

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