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Since installing MAC OSx 10.8, I am unable to change the default program for .xls files. It will only accept "numbers". I am trying to change it to open office, and while it does show up in a list of known apps, when I select it, it always reverts back to numbers no matter what I try. Any suggestions?
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)
How are you making this change?
How are you making this change?
Hi Kappy.
1) I am using Finder to find the file name of a .xls file
2) I am right clicking, and selecting "Get Info" from the menu
3) I am going to a section in the screen labeled, "Open With", and using the drop down to select Open Office.
As soon as I click on open office, it immediately reverts back to Numbers.
Did you also click the Change All box?
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions...
Reset Launch Services...
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/resetlaunchservices.html#Anchor-Reset-47857
Reboot.
OK so here is what I figured out. Don't know why it works this way, but I stumbled on it.
If the file was not open in any program, and I tried changing the default program to open it, it would not let me change the file type to open with.
But what I noticed is if I had the file open with the program that I wanted to use as the default, then magically, it would let me change the default program, in this case, to Open Office. I don't know why it behaves this way, I can just tell you it does. So after opening the program in Open Office, I was able to select Open Office as the default program, and then checked the "All" button to open all programs of this extension with OO as the default program. It worked like a charm.
I don't konw if this is unique behavior in the latest version of IOS (10.8), but it works just in case others are running into this issue.
Thanks for the responses.
Great work, thanks for the Report! 🙂
I'm having exactly this problem. Using Mac OS 10.8.2 and OpenOffice 3.3.0.
I select a .doc file and show info (CMD - I) but if I change "Open with" to OpenOffice it simply won't stick, the meny just revert back to TextEdit. But if I change to Pages that will stick!
So it seem's that the issue is related with OpenOffice. It don't make any difference in my case if I have the selected file open in OpenOffice at the same time. But since the change in what program to use to open a file is in Mac OS I don't think the problem is in OpenOffice.
Any ideas?
I'd had the same problem but somehow I fixed it. I have marked file as "locked" then it allowed me to change "open with" to OpenOffice. It even asked me whether I want to apply this change to all the similiar files. Now it works!
Tried a few suggestions. Marking the file as 'locked' and then chaning the open with in the Get Info box worked. Thanks!
On the same subject,
had trouble with .txt files received as e-mail attachments, because mavericks uses pages as default to open them and the like of yahoo and outlook wouldn't accept them as attachment to the reply once I had opened them and modified them.
Problem solved by
1 right clicking on the saved file once modified and compressing it
OR
2 dragged file from downloads, BEFORE opeining it, to , say desktop, right clicked it, get info, open with (in my case chose open office) , then apply to all similar files.
The latter works fine as it has changed the default opening all downloaded .txt files from pages to open office.
🙂🙂🙂
Similar situation:
Unable to change default application for file type
iMac
27"
2009
10.9.2
Images from Canon 5D MKiii
CR2 files
Get Info
Open with: Adobe Photoshop CS5.1
Change All
Dialog: Are you sure you want to change similar documents to open...
Continue
Reverts to original
Hi Commddot,
Did you ever find a solution for this problem? I'm having the same atm... (but for indesign files). You described it exactly the way I tried.
Thanks in advance for letting me know.
Default Programs can't be changed
