The skill of using the registry editor is a must for any computer tech or admin anymore. When a piece of software, or even your Windows OS needs to be tweaked, the registry is the place to turn. Unfortunately, the Windows registry is easy to get lost in, due to keys, entries, and values that resemble each other closely.

One of the neatest tricks with regedit, is to be able to get back to the value you last edited so you can either change it again or reset it to its default value. Fortunately, regedit makes it easy to do this with an often overlooked feature. It stares you square in the face when you run the registry editor, but most don’t notice it.

Between the View and Help selections on the File menu is a selection aptly named Favorites. Yes, just like your web browser, you can add a favorite in regedit to get right back to where you were.

Ironically enough, these favorites are added as a registry value in the registry. If you are supporting someone remotely and need to get them to the right key in the registry, simply add the location to your registry favorites, then export the selected favorite from:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Regedit\Favorites

to a .reg file and send it to them. Have them run the .reg file and it will be added to their favorites for quick access.