Outlook Express Question

[TwoRails]

In general, how do you change what program opens an attachment?

Specifically, I want Power Point attachments to open with MS's Power Point Viewer, not my PP editor (which is Not Power Point).

TIA

TR

Running OE 6 in XP Pro SP2.

[EzyStvy]

Similar to your other thread...Do the Open With option on a file that has been saved to the hard drive and set to always use.

[TwoRails]

It's different, actually. If I open a Power Point from, say, Windows Explorer, then it opens with MS PP Viewer, as desired. The only program that opens a PP otherwise is OE. I haven't had a chance to play with the other one yet...

[juppy]

Have you checked your file associations for the Power Point files? If not, you might check out this link. It's for an error message when *no* association is present in the associations, but the wrong file association can make it open with the wrong program too. You'll probably want to go down to where it says "Manual fix".

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/ppsopen.htm

If that doesn't help....um....was OE installed before the PP editor (the one you don't want opening the file? If so, maybe OE needs to be reinstalled (after making the above association changes) so it can pick up the new settings for opening the PP files.

[TwoRails]

Hey juppy. Yes, I checked the file association under Windows Explorer, and they are set to open with MS PP Viewer. The link is just doing the same thing, but shows you how do it manually.

Yes, OE was installed first, then the non-MS editor (Presentations, part of Word Perfect's office suite), then MS's PP viewer. And, yes, to get PPTs to open with the MS viewer I did (a while back) have to set it's file association.

I just need to set it in OE somehow...

[juppy]

Does the PPS file association actually have the "Open" action in the Actions area though? Because, from what I've read doing Googling, it has to have that "Open" action with the "Application used" box saying C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\PowerPoint Viewer\pptview.exe "%1" (or whatever your PowerPoint viewer executable is) and "Use DDE" needs to be unchecked.

Other than that, I can't find anything else on why it wouldn't work.

[TwoRails]

I can't get to anything showing which application is used other than the opening window's "detail" section. Even the "Advanced" button changes to "Restore" when I select either PPS or PPT.

The screen shot below may help...

So, I'm getting the impression there is no direct way to change how OE handles attachments??

[juppy]

That's pretty weird. It's like something else has totally taken over that association, because I compared it with mine, and beside my PPS and PPT extensions it says "Microsoft PowerPoint Slide Show" and "Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation" respectively.....whereas your's just says PPS file and PPT file. I wonder what it would do to just delete those two file associations and start over....either making a new association for each one or doing the "Open with" stuff on an existing PPS and PPT file and letting it make the association that way?

[TwoRails]

You are reading my mind, juppy. If I have time this weekend I'll do a full backup (it's due) and give that a try. We'll see what happens...

[juppy]

Heheh...."juppy the mind reader".....never been called that before. Been called alot of *other* things, but not a mind reader!

Good luck with it, TR. If that doesn't fix it, then I'm all outta ideas.

[TwoRails]

Ya, I'll be out of ideas, too.

As far as being "called things," I've always said you can call me anything but late for dinner!!