How to Change the Default Program for Opening Files

Posted on 19. Jun, 2008 by Kyle Judkins in How To, MS Office

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From time to time, you may have your defaults change either by you or some strange force.  What once were you’re Word files may now only open with Notepad or Adobe, because the settings somehow randomly changed.  This guide will show you how to get things back to normal and hopefully answer a few questions I got yesterday.

The first thing you want to do is locate the file you want to open.  I have saved a file called Fake file in My Documents that I will use in this example.  You want to Right Click on the file you want to open.  Then, select Open with… from the menu.

change default open

This will open up a list of programs to choose from.  You should be able to find the program you are looking for somewhere on the list, but if you can’t, you can browse for the right program.  Once you have found the right program, highlight that program by clicking on it.  Then, check the box at the bottom that says “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.”  Now, click OK.

select program

This should make sure that all of the files of that type will open with the selected program in the future.

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3 Responses to “How to Change the Default Program for Opening Files”

  1. Ajay

    21. Jun, 2008

    you can also change the default programs by going to tools->folder options->file type
    and here you can also change the default program
    this seems to very relevant after alternative to pdf reader

    Reply to this comment

  2. Juna

    10. Jul, 2008

    I am using Vista and for some reason, all my documents, whether downloaded from the net or from emails, it all opens in Adobe. I’m not given the option of ‘opening with’ to choose a different program. Please assist

    Reply to this comment

  3. kyle.judkins

    12. Jul, 2008

    @Juna I think this website will answer your question. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/06/20/how-to-edit-or-change-file-type-or-extension-associations-default-programs-in-windows-vista/

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