In the tutorial and choose default programs for opening files in Windows Vista, we saw how to associate a certain type of file to a program for performance or reproduction.

But there is a fairly fast and easy way to do it from the Windows Explorer.

For this, the file you want to open we click the right mouse button (usually the right). This shows the context menu of options.

About going to Open With ... and we appear as shown in the image below:

As we can see from the menu on the left, we show the software we have installed and can open this file type (in this case an image file).

But if the program you want to use is not listed (and we have it installed, obviously) or we assign the program to all files of that type, we see everything below the option to select a default choice. We click on this option and we will display the following window:

In it we see the options that will appear above, but we also have an option to mark the places Always use the selected program to open these files. If this box is checked, all files with that extension will be automatically associated with that program, so this option (which is checked by default) should be used with caution.

We also see a Browse button that indicates. Tapping is shown in the Windows Explorer so that we can find the program that we want to open this file in the event that we are not among the files set to display.



This option is useful, but before you use must be very sure that the program we choose to support the type of files you are going to assign. There is no point allocating a file. Mp3 to Paint, as a file. Mp3 is an audio file and Paint is an image editor. Likewise, assigning a useless file. Xls (Excel) to Word, because Word can not open an Excel file.

As you can see in the pictures, such as in Windows XP, the option Open with ... just shows the programs that are able to open the file type for which we are working to prevent associating a file type a program that is unable to open it with this (especially if you have the option Always use the selected program to open this file type) that errors in the system.

I've found an error in this is that in a. Pdf (Portable Document Format) shows us the option to open with Word when a document. Pdf can not be opened directly with the text editor. This, though I could not see, could be due to the installation of the tool to save documents in Word format. Pdf or a misinterpretation of the document type.
This also occurs with some types of image files (. Jpg, for example), but not so when it comes to a file. Png or a. Bmp, and could be related to the above.