Files open in the wrong program fix

Modified on Tue, 9 May, 2023 at 9:54 PM

Most of us double-click a file to open it, but if the file association in Windows is broken, as it often is, it won’t open in the app you expect it to. You can fix that by clicking on the Start menu and choosing Settings. Click on the System tab and look for the category labeled “default apps.” In there, you can choose what app opens each type of file and specify an app for different file extensions.

default program open files windows 10

All you need to do is right-click on the file you want to open and select ‘Choose another app‘. This will open a new window where you can set the default program to use in order to open the respective type of file. Simply check the option ‘Always use this app to them files‘.

You can also set the default apps for opening specific files and folders from the Settings page.

  1. So, go to Settings and select Apps and then click on ‘Default Apps’, as shown in the screenshot below.


  1. default apps windows 10
  2. Now, click on the type of content that you want to open.
  3. A drop-down menu will appear on the screen, allowing you to select the default program to use.

choose default app windows 10

 

                     Further explained:

 

It depends on the type of file it is.  Say for instance you downloaded and Adobe file.  Adobe files open with PDF and all PDF files are supposed to be associated with Adobe Reader to be able to open the files.  If something or someone changes what program they open with, you will get this type of error.  Just follow one of the 2 steps above to re associate the PDF files to open with Adobe reader.  If you don't see it in the list, as illustrated above, then you can go to more app to find the program.

Below are the most common file associations for a Windows based PC.

 

 

 

File Extension

File Type

.AIFF or .AIF

Audio Interchange File Format

.AU

Basic Audio

.AVI

Multimedia Audio/Video

.BAT

PC batch file

.BMP

Windows BitMap

.CLASS or .JAVA

Java files

.CSV

Comma separated, variable length file (Open in Excel)

.CVS

Canvas

.DBF

dbase II, III, IV data

.DIF

Data Interchange format

.DOC or .DOCX

Microsoft Word for Windows/Word97

.EPS

Encapsulated PostScript

.EXE

PC Application

.FM3

Filemaker Pro databases (the numbers following represent the version #)

.GIF

Graphics Interchange Format

.HQX

Macintosh BinHex

.HTM or .HTML

Web page source text

.JPG or JPEG

JPEG graphic

.MAC

MacPaint

.MAP

Web page imagemap

.MDB

MS Access database

.MID or .MIDI

MIDI sound

.MOV or .QT

QuickTime Audio/Video

.MTB or .MTW

MiniTab

.PDF

Acrobat -Portable document format

.P65
 .T65

PageMaker (the numbers following represent the version #) P=publication, T=template

.PNG

Portable Network Graphics

.PPT or .PPTX

PowerPoint

.PSD

Adobe PhotoShop

.PSP

PaintShop Pro

.QXD

QuarkXPress

.RA

RealAudio

.RTF

Rich Text Format

.SIT

Stuffit Compressed Archive

.TAR

UNIX TAR Compressed Archive

.TIF

TIFF graphic

.TXT

ASCII text (Mac text does not contain line feeds--use DOS Washer Utility to fix)

.WAV

Windows sound

.WK3

Lotus 1-2-3 (the numbers following represent the version #)

.WKS

MS Works

WPD or .WP5

WordPerfect (the numbers following represent the version #)

.XLS or .XLSX

Excel spreadsheet

.ZIP

PC Zip Compressed Archive

 

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