Thursday, August 23, 2007

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney


Recently I was asked why when you click on an icon does it open with a specific application and not another? For instance, let’s say that I use Photoshop Elements for editing my photos but every time I click a photo it opens in Microsoft photo Editor. The way many of us might deal with this is go to Photoshop first and open the file that way. However I want to make this easier. Now there are two ways of doing this, one is permanent (not really) and the other is one time. All you do is right click on the file. Now this file does not have to be a photo. It could be anything giving you trouble. Once you right click a menu pops up and you can choose open with and if you want to just try it this way choose a program from the list. However I would like to make this a bit more permanent so I choose choose program from the open with menu. This brings up a lengthy list of every program you have. Choose the application that fits your needs like Photoshop for a photo. Now the semi permanent part, click the box next to Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. This means that when your computer reads that extension at the end of your file, .jpg, .doc, .xls, .wav, .mp3….,it will open with your chosen program every time. I used this not long ago on a friend’s computer to stop all her documents opening in Microsoft Word. Instead it now opens in NeoOffice. Give it a try.

Note: you may have to experiment a few times with different programs to get a file to open. I got a .swf and tried to open it with everything I had and it turned out Firefox was the only thing I had installed that would work.

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