The choice of application to open the file is not set. Open with - how to add and remove menu items
Good day to you, my dear readers. As always, Dmitry Kostin is with you, and we continue to learn computer literacy. At my work (and not only at work) there were cases when people had a problem that was actually a trifle. For example, after switching to Windows 8, many files began to be opened through new built-in applications from the metro interface.
For example, someone wants to open a photo, but an application for viewing photos opens, which is actually not very convenient, but it loads. The photo itself opens, but on a black background, which annoyed many people. The same thing happened with video files, pdf files, etc. No, standard applications from windows 7 (photo viewer, windows media player) remained, but they were not the default. So many people asked me to change everything.
And it’s not about the eight. There are cases when, due to some local reasons, ordinary pictures can be opened using Photoshop by default, which is not at all convenient. In general, for people like this different cases I'll show you how to change the program for opening files in Windows.
The easiest way to do all this is through the context menu.
Well, have you tried it? Now it opens as you wanted? If necessary, ask.
Control Panel
The second way to do our shenanigans is through our favorite control panel. What's the plus this method? Yes, in addition to changing one file type, you can choose to specific program opened all types of supported files. Those. if you set it as the default program Windows Media Player, which means it will play AVI, MP4, MPG, etc.
Well? It seems like nothing complicated! But that's not all. Take a deep breath, crack your fingers and neck, do stretches and move on.
Mapping File Types to Programs
In general, I would like to focus on one small additional detail. Go to the Control Panel again and select “Default Programs”. Only this time, go not to the first item, but to the second - “Matching file types with programs and blah blah blah...”.
Here we see everything available formats files and we can change the default application right from here (Well, on the right you can see applications that open this file type in at the moment). There is nothing complicated here. You just need to left-click once on the desired file format, and then click on the “Change” button, which is located above and to the right. Well, then everything happens as in our first method, i.e. A window pops up with a selection of available applications.
But in general I wanted to talk a little about something else. When your browser is closed and you click on any link to a site that you found in some document, program or from a shortcut to an Internet site, the default browser automatically launches. So here you can set the default browser, which will open when you click on links from outside. To do this, you need to go down below, where there are not file formats, but protocols. There you will find HTTP://. This is what we need. Click “Change” and select any other browser in the same way. But if your browser suits you, then you can ignore this point altogether.
Well, that’s basically all I wanted to tell you in our lesson today. I just wanted to add that if you value your files and data on your computer, then you definitely need to protect them from loss. And I’m not talking about a regular antivirus now. Here everything is much more complicated, data may be lost as a result various reasons, both software and physically. Therefore, I recommend that you watch this video course, in which you will learn how to protect your files from loss or what to do if loss has already occurred. The video explains everything in detail and in an accessible way, so don’t worry that it will be difficult for you. Not at all.
Well, I say goodbye to you for today. I hope that my article was useful to you, so do not forget to subscribe to my blog updates, then you will not miss anything important. See you in the next articles. Good luck and bye-bye!
Best regards, Dmitry Kostin
When you right-click on Windows files 10, 8 and Windows 7 a context menu appears with basic actions for this element, including containing the “Open with” item and the ability to select a program other than the one selected by default. The list is convenient, but it may contain unnecessary items or may not contain what you need (for example, I find it convenient to have the “Notepad” item in “Open with” for all file types).
This instruction provides details on how to remove items from this section of the contextual Windows menu, as well as how to add programs to Open With. Also separately about what to do if “Open with” is not in the menu (this bug occurs in Windows 10).
How to remove items from the “Open with” section
If you need to remove any program from the item context menu“Open with”, this can be done in the Windows Registry Editor or using third-party programs.
Unfortunately, some items cannot be deleted using this method in Windows 10 - 7 (for example, those that are associated with certain file types by the operating system itself).
Usually, the item disappears immediately. If this does not happen, restart your computer or restart Windows Explorer.
Note: if required program is not listed in the registry section above, see if it is there: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ File_extension\ OpenWithList(including in subsections). If it is not there, then it will be given below additional information about how you can still remove a program from the list.
Disabling "Open With" menu items in the free OpenWithView program
One of the programs that allows you to customize the items displayed in the “Open with” menu is the free OpenWithView, available on the official website www.nirsoft.net/utils/open_with_view.html(some antiviruses don't like system software from nirsfot, but he was not noticed in any “bad” things. On specified page There is also a file with the Russian language for this program, it needs to be saved in the same folder where OpenWithView is located).
After starting the program, you will see a list of items that can be displayed in the context menu for various types files.
All that is required to remove a program from “Open with” is to click on it and disable it using the red button in the menu at the top, or in the context menu.
Judging by the reviews, the program works in Windows 7, but: when I tested it in Windows 10, I was unable to remove it from using Opera from the context menu, however, the program turned out to be useful:
An example of registry locations from point 2, the removal of which can help remove Not desired item from “Open with” (similar ones may exist for other programs):
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ SOFTWARE\ Classes\ Program name\ Shell\ Open(I deleted the entire “Open” section).
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Classes\ Applications\ Program name\ Shell\ Open
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Classes\ Program name\ Shell\ Open
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Clients\ StartMenuInternet\ Program name\ Shell\ Open(this point seems to only apply to browsers).
It seems that this is all about deleting items. Let's move on to adding them.
How to add a program to "Open With" in Windows
If you need to add additional item in the "Open with" menu, then the easiest way to do it is standard means Windows:
After opening a file once using the program of your choice, it will forever appear in the "Open with" list for of this type files.
All this can be done using the registry editor, but the path is not the easiest:
Close Registry Editor. Typically, a computer restart is not required for the changes to take effect.
What to do if “Open with” is not in the context menu
Some Windows users 10 are faced with the fact that the “Open with” item is not in the context menu. If you have a problem, you can fix it using Registry Editor:
Click OK and close the Registry Editor - the “Open with” option should appear where it should be.
That's it, I hope everything works as expected and required. If not or if there is additional questions on the topic - leave comments, I will try to answer.
The context menu item “Open With List” is often used to open startup programs. The Windows operating system offers programs to open the corresponding file. Over time, this list can accumulate quite a lot of programs, sometimes not intended to open the file you want to open.
Quite often there are such situations that in order to discover the unknown operating system file, the Explorer “Open with” context menu includes programs that are not at all designed to work with the file you want to open.
You can simply try to open a file by mistake and after that such a program will be added to the list of programs that are intended to be opened this file. Therefore, it is advisable to remove the entry about an unnecessary program from the context menu.
- Attention! Before making changes to the operating room registry Windows systems It is advisable to create a point, or make a backup one. This way you will protect your operating system from possible problems or failures that may occur due to erroneous actions with the system registry. After problems occur in the operating system, you will need to perform a system restore, or restore the registry from a previously created registry backup.
Consider a situation where the list of programs that are designed for viewing images includes, for example, text editor Word. In fact, I myself put this program on this list in order to show how to remove an unnecessary program from the “Open with” context menu list.
The example is an image file in JPEG format. When opening a file using the context menu - “Open with”, among the programs designed for this there is a text editor Microsoft Office Word.
You can select the context menu item “Select program...”. In this case, the “Select a program” window will also contain a program that is not intended to open a file of this extension.
Removing from the "Open with" list in the Registry Editor
An incorrectly selected program will need to be removed from the context menu using the Registry Editor. Only one entry will be deleted in the system registry, which relates to a specific program.
You can enter the “Registry Editor” by pressing the “Windows” + “R” keys on your keyboard, and then in the “Run” window you will need to enter the expression “regedit”, and then click on the “OK” button, or press the key on the keyboard "Enter".
You can get to the “Registry Editor” in another way. To do this, go to the “Start” menu, enter the expression “regedit” in the “Search” field, after displaying the search results, you need to click on the image of the “regedit” program.
After the User Account Control window appears, in which you need to agree to the changes, the Registry Editor window appears.
In the “Registry Editor” window, you will need to double-click on the listed items (folders) “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” => “Software” => “Microsoft” => “Windows” => “CurrentVersion” => “Explorer” => “File” Exts."
Full path to the file extension:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.file extension\OpenWithList
In the “File Exts” folder, you need to select the file extension from which in the context menu you want to delete the entry about the program with which you can open the file. In our case, this is the “.jpg” extension. Then, in the “OpenWithList” folder, select the program whose entry you want to delete. In our example, this is “WINWORD.EXE”.
In the window with a warning that appears, you need to click on the “Yes” button.
After these steps, you can close the Registry Editor. The changes made to the registry took effect without restarting the computer.
In the future, when you open a file using the “Open with” context menu item, the unnecessary program will no longer be recorded.
Deleting entries in this registry branch is not always successful.
Look at two more registry branches that may contain entries about “unnecessary” programs:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.file extension\OpenWithList HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.file extension\OpenWithList
If the entry in the context menu remains, also check these registry branches.
Fixing Incorrect File Association
For complex cases where the wrong applications are selected to open many types of files, use any of the 7 methods in Windows.
After following the steps to change the file association, the files will be tearable using the correct applications.
Conclusions of the article
In this way you can remove “Open with” from the context menu unnecessary entries about programs that were included in this list by mistake. The next time you start the program, unnecessary entries will no longer mislead the user.
How to remove a program from the “Open with” list (video)
This article will discuss the solution to a situation where there are unnecessary programs in this list.
Why is the “open with” context menu item useful? Everything is very simple, let’s say you have several media players installed on your computer to play video files, and one of them is the default player (the one you most often like to use). If for some reason you need to play the video using another player, then you simply click on the file right click mouse, and select the desired program from the “open with” list.
And since quite a lot of programs are usually installed on a computer, and one file can be opened using different ones, this menu item can sometimes be very useful!
How can it be on this list? unnecessary program? Let's consider two popular reasons:
1) You yourself once tried to open a file (accidentally or on purpose) with a program not intended for it (for example, a text file in graphic editor). After which this same program is automatically added to this list.
2) During installation new program she adds herself to this list.
Let's consider the second option. You didn’t have to look far for an example: the program (which, by the way, was described on this site in one of the articles). The program itself is good, but after installing it, this small incident happened: if you right-click on text file(txt extension), and look in the “open with” list, we will see our program there. What is naturally not normal, since PDF-XChange Viewer needed to work with files pdf format, and not txt.
In principle, these are, of course, trifles, and you can simply not pay attention to them. But if this state of affairs still does not suit you, then this problem can be solved quite simply!
Editing the Registry
To solve this problem you will have to edit a little system registry.
So if you're ready and backup too, then you can start:
1) Open system Windows registry, to do this, press the keyboard shortcut, write “regedit”, and press Ok.
2) Go to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts
3) Then, in the FileExts section, find the file extension for which you need to change the “open with” list (in our case, this is the txt extension).
P.S. The list is quite long, and in order not to search manually, you can use the search: right-click on the FileExts section, then the “find” menu item, enter required extension file, and click the “find next” button. If after the first attempt you find something that is not what you need, press the F3 button, and so on until the desired item is found.
4) When required section will be found, expand it, and go to the OpenWithList subsection.
5) Now go to right side registry, find there the name of the program that you want to remove from the “open with” list.
And when you find it, delete the corresponding parameter by right-clicking on it and selecting “delete” accordingly.
After which a window will pop up (with a yellow exclamation point), where you will need to confirm your intention to delete this parameter.
After the steps above, the problem should be resolved. Check if this is true: right-click on any file with the txt extension, look in the “open with” list, if the PDF-XChange Viewer item disappears, then you did everything right!
