#Restore exe file association windows 10 how to

So you can call a printing function from the Print command, an editing function from the Edit command, etc.

By specifying a filetype/ProgId, you can then move on to the Registry data associated with the filetype and from there extend into handling different user-defined actions via different handlers. Why do we have a filetype (also known as a ProgId)? Well, if you associated an extension directly with a handler, you’d only ever be able to deal with files with that extension via that handler. xml extension in Notepad instead of the default of IE), you can right-click on the file and choose Open With.įTAs have a relationship between the extension, the filetype and the handler. If you wanted to open the file type in a different program (for instance, open a file with the. Each user normally has a set of FTAs stored in their Registry, defining the program that will be used when you double-click a particular file type. txt extension commonly open in Notepad, but you can use many other things, WordPad, Notepad++, even Microsoft Excel. docx extension commonly open in Microsoft Word. We’re all familiar with FTAs – they are the program that opens a particular file type extension.

#Restore exe file association windows 10 how to

So we are going to write up everything on this topic and finally set up some testing that will show, once and for all, how to deal with them. Judging by the number of emails and comments I get about the subject, it’s clear that it hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved. I have done a number of articles on handling File Type Associations (from hereon in referred to as FTAs) on Windows versions from 8 upwards. FTAs have been a problem for a long time.