Hands on: Customise your Open With list

When you right-click on a file in XP’s Explorer do you find that your ‘Open With’ list is over-populated? I find, over time, entries appear that are either unwanted (I don’t want to view JPEG pictures in the Quicktime Viewer, or my browser) or inappropriate (Adobe Reader will try ­ but fail ­ to read old Windows 3 legacy Cardfiles).

Windows keeps track of what can open what in two sections of the Registry. The default ownership of a file extension is stored in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT branch of the Registry, which is common to all users. On a standard Windows-with-Microsoft Office installation, this means DOC and RTF files will open in Word by default but you can also ‘Open With’ Wordpad.

Other ‘Open With’ choices are stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch of the Registry, which means these can be customised on a per-user basis. For example, if you want to see the raw formatting code of an RTF file, you can right-click on it, Open With (you may need to hold down the Shift key to get that menu item) and then ‘Choose Program’. The top few ‘Recommended’ programs are the existing default options, below that is a list of other possibilities ­ if you don’t see what you want you can use the Browse button.

Don’t tick the ‘Always use the selected program…’ box unless this is what you really want to do. Having once opened, say, an RTF in Notepad, you’ll find the latter added to the recommended Open With list. As well as adding your own programs to the list, you’ll find that Windows ­ or other applications ­ can do this for you, whether you want it or not. For example, if you’ve tried the trick with the 3D Flying Objects screensaver below, you’ll find ‘Direct 3D Flying Objects Screensaver’ has been added to the list for BMP files.

You can prune this list by editing the Registry but create a System Restore Point first. Run Regedit, then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts. Here you will find entries for every registered file type, including many you may never have heard of. Open any extension you want to prune, then open the OpenWithList key.

From the string values on the right, delete any you want removed. You may need to do some detective work here as the programs are listed by their executable name, ss3dfo.scr is the screensaver and shimgvw.dll is the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. If you don’t recognise a program, a search for the file, followed by an examination of its properties should reveal all.

Finally, don’t forget you can use the right-click ‘Send To’ command to open any file in a non-associated application. To add, say, Notepad, to the ‘Send To’ list, open the SendTo folder. In XP the easiest way is Start, Run, sendto, and in Vista it’s Start then type shell:sendto in the Search box. Once the folder is open, you can create shortcuts in the normal way.

Switching tips
The whole point of Windows, since version one, is you can run more than one program at a time and switch between them. In 16-bit versions you could do this (and you still can) by clicking on a window to bring it to the front. This can often involve having to move or minimise a lot of windows, so an easier way was (and still is) holding down the Alt key and pressing Tab repeatedly. Windows 95 brought us the Taskbar, with every running program or open folder represented by a button. Except Control Panel items. To see these you need to use the Alt & Tab trick that produces a panel with a tile for each window.

In Vista there’s a further refinement in that Control & Alt & Tab keeps the panel open when you release the keys, until you click on an item. Control & Windows key & Tab does a similar thing with 3D Flip ­ as does the Quick Launch button. Finally, just to complete the set, Control & Tab switches between tabs in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

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