4 Replies Latest reply: Aug 24, 2010 5:16 AM by BobLevine RSS

    Changing default program in Windows 7

    JWH-NIRC Community Member

      I have InDesign CS5 and CS3 on my computer. I want CS3 to be the default program to open the INDD and INDB files (at least for the time being). Normally this is pretty straightforward in Windows 7, but for some reason, when I go to the "Make a file always open with a specific program" option and browse to click on the CS3 "InDesign.exe", the icon does not appear. I tried everything, but and the only choice I have is to open CS3 first and then open the files from within it.

           Worse still, even when it is open, clicking on an InDesign files opens CS5.

           This never happened when I had CS3 and CS2 on the computer, so I am guessing Adobe did something. Any idea how to fix this, short of tampering with the Registry, which I never like to do...?

        • 2. Re: Changing default program in Windows 7
          JWH-NIRC Community Member

          Is there no way to fix this in Windows without purchasing a new program? It seems to me that Adobe has blocked out what is otherwise an ordinary Windows option. I cannot imagine why they would want to do that?

          • 3. Re: Changing default program in Windows 7
            Stix Hart Community Member

            Disclaimer: I use XP, not 7.  Having said that I've played around with this a fair bit and the underlying principles are the same.  I'm sure Adobe haven't intentionally taken away any capability here, there would've been a very noisy reaction if that was the case.  As to why it worked in CS2 & 3, perhaps you were just lucky, the way Windows handles different Indesign versions is pretty fragile, the order you changed settings then must just have worked somehow.

             

            This probably won't help a lot, but what I found in XP when I installed CS5 after CS3 is that initially I got the option to right click a file and choose CS3 or 5.  It was also easy enough to change the association of .indd files to CS3 but once I'd done that there was no way back.

             

            So I'm not sure why you can't make a simple change like that in 7, unless you have already made some other change already, which seems to break it.  If you suspect you might have done that a reinstall of CS5 should fix it.  And be aware that if you do manage to do it, when you want to change back to having CS5 as the default you'll probably have to do another install of CS5.

             

            Annoying, but that is the way it's designed and it's not likely to change soon.  It seems the file handling preferences aren't given much priority at all, and when you're working on only a few files a day that would be fine, but for those of us working on waaay more than that it's disappointing.

            • 4. Re: Changing default program in Windows 7
              BobLevine CommunityMVP

              Great...another conspiracy theory.

               

              Bob