Associating same extension to multiple programs

yasdfer · Dec 24, 2008

Hello,

How do you associate files with the same extension to be opened by multiple programs in Vista? For example, I want .jpg files to be viewed using one program and edited in another. This was straightforward in XP but the option seems to have disappeared in Vista. Any clues?

Thanks.

sygnus21 · Dec 24, 2008

I'm not sure what you mean by "two different" programs as you can only associate one "default" program to open a file. At any rate to assign a default program to open a particular file -

1- Right Click the file,
2- choose "Open With" in the drop down menu
3- Click "Choose Default Program"
4- Select "Select a program from a list of installed programs"
5- click "OK"
6- When the "Open With" box opens,
7- choose the program you want to associate the file with,
8- then make sure the "Alway use the selected program to open this kind of file" check box is checked.
9- Click "OK" and that's it. Program associated.

There you have it.

johngalt · Dec 24, 2008

In Vista, you can associate multiple programs that can be called from the "Open With" item from the context menu.

Since you want to set one program to *view* JPGs and another set to *edit* I'd install the editing program first and let it become the default editor. Then you can install the viewer and let it become the default viewer. Finally, you can simply use Open With to pick the editor, as I assume you'll be viewing more than editing....

yasdfer · Dec 25, 2008

Thanks for the answers! This gets me close to what I what.

A few more clarifications.

1. Is there a way to change the "open" string in the right click menu to reflect which program is the default. For example, instead of "open" I want it to display "open with x". More generally, I would like to add entry in the context menu for other operations such as printing. This was possible in XP.
2. How do you change which program opens under the edit menu? For example, I could add my photo editor to the "edit" menu entry and a viewer to "open".
3. How do I pass command line arguments to the open command. For example, while opening .cpp files in Emacs I can send in various command line arguments specific to Emacs and C++ files. If opening in an IDE the defaults arguments are fine. Again, this was possible in XP.

Regards.

johngalt · Dec 25, 2008

Not *easily* - it requires modifying the registry - I ran into the same issue when I tried to make a neat little freeware called RegPad to be my default registry key editor (as in .reg files, not as in editing keys directly in the registry).

As I am very familiar with the registry, it only took me about 3 hours to find all the different places I need to change something in order to make it work....

As for 2, I would assume that that would be a simple matter of using the program itself to register itself as the default editor and viewer respectively - manually, again, would require a much deeper delving into the registry.

you can do it via shortcuts, editing the shortcut parameters, or you can simply use the run command, provided that the app you want to use is in the path....

yasdfer · Dec 25, 2008

Did you end up writing a program to do these tasks? And if so, is that available publicly?

I will look into your solutions for 1 and 2. If I can assign a shortcut to the open with option, that would solve 3 (not very elegant though).

What I don't get is why the File Types tab has disappeared from the Folder Option menu? Seems quite a regressive step. Is there a chance that it would reappear in some future SP?

johngalt · Dec 25, 2008

No, unfortunately I did not write a program to do it - because the parameters change with every single file type that you run into.

The reason it gets hard is that there are multiple locations in the registry, and at least one of them was using the file type's SSID - to that alone would change with every file type.

That, and the fact that I am not a programmer

Associating same extension to multiple programs

yasdfer

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yasdfer

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