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I have been using Acer laptops since last 5-6 years and never purchased Dell for own use. Recently when I switched Job, my employer purchased a new Dell Laptop for my office.

I have no complaint about the product but there I find a blunder on Laptop Keyboard. As I have to work mostly on Excel and other data analyzing applications, you can assume how important a dedicated context menu button is.

Dell Keyboard without Right Click (Context Menu) button

This is a very hard to work with this combination but I am not willing to change or replace the laptop as entire accounting process for the purchase has been completed. I searched over Internet and take suggestion from Dell community and many other hardware related discussion boards.

Then I found a small piece of software called SharpKeys. SharpKeys is a open source utility published at CodePlex website.

Actually, while searching, I knew that, Keyboard buttons can be re-assigned to some other functionality as designed by altering registry. But it is very hard to identify the exact Registry Key and alter its value, so I took help of this less than 0.5 MB piece of software.

First I analysed the keyboard and decided a key that is less used and have alternate. Now, both Shift button or both Control button are equally required and useful so it is very tough to change these keys. But there is a Alt Gr (Right Alt) Key which is less used and can be changed as context menu.

Step 1:

After downloading this small utility which is completely safe, I have installed and opened its screen. Home screen of application is below.

Step 2:

Click on Add button on the left bottom and you will get a new form where you have to choose Key you want to map and function that is to be assigned in left and right listbox respectively. In our case, the Key to be changed is Special: Right Alt with hardware code of E0_38. And function to be assigned is Special: Application (E0_5D).  You can choose your keyboard button by pressing Type Key button in Map this Key (From Key) section bottom and choose To this Key as Special: Application (E0_5D) if you want to make it Context Menu button. 

Step 3:

After selecting Keys in both side Click on OK. The pop-up window will close and a new entry will be added in Grid. All you have to do is just click on Write to Registry button as in below screenshot.

Step 4:

Once you click on Write to Registry button, there will be an alert to confirm and suggest next action. 

Now, all you have to do is just log out and login again. Rather than wasting your time on pressing Shift+F10 and which will work for some application and not for some application, this method will work for all application and is reliable. This will not effect performance of your computer neither any security breach.

There are plenty of alternative of software available for this kind of Keyboard mapping. But I find this free, reliable and lightweight. I have tried it with Windows 7 and Windows 10 64 bit, it worked like charm.

If you also purchased Dell Laptop and are tired of searching Alternative of Context Menu in keyboard, this is the solution. Not all Dell Laptops but some models do not have Context Menu (right click) button. We just created by replacing the functionality of Alt Gr (Right Alt) button using SharpKey application.