Figure 3-11: The Notepad applet making a vain attempt to display a photograph
It’s important to understand that when you see a mess like this, you do not want to save the document!
If you do, you may never be able to open it in any program in the future! You need to close the program.
If asked whether you want to save the document, be sure you choose No!
That’s not the program I wanted
The associations that Windows makes between documents and programs might not always be what
you want them to be. For example, you might want to edit a picture in some graphics program such as
Paint Shop Pro. When you click the document’s icon, however, the picture opens in an entirely different
program. There are a couple of solutions to this problem:
Open the program you want to use, and then choose File Open from that program’s
menu bar and open the document normally from the Open dialog box that appears.
Or, in Explorer, right-click the icon for the document you want to open, and choose Open
With from the menu that appears. Select the program you want to use to open the file.
The section “Expanding Your Open With Menu” in Chapter 4 provides more information on using the
Open With menu. For now, we need to focus on one other type of program — the ones that aren’t very
compatible with Windows XP.

Files” in Chapter 2.
When Documents Get Weird
When you open a document icon, Windows decides which program to use to display that document by
looking at the document’s file name extension. Although usually invisible to you, the extension is a
period followed by one or more letters at the end of the file name. For example, WordPad (and Microsoft
Word) documents all have a .DOC extension, which is to say that Windows associates different types of
documents with different programs based on the document’s filename extension. Sometimes the
association won’t exist, or won’t be what you want, as discussed next.
Windows cannot open a file
If you attempt to open a document that Windows hasn’t yet associated with a program, you’ll come to
the dialog box shown in Figure 3-9. As the dialog box indicates, you can attempt to go online (if you
have Internet access) and look up the needed information. Alternatively, you can click the Select from
List button and select a program from the Open With dialog box shown in Figure 3-10.
Windows XP Bible
page 64
Figure 3-9: This dialog box appears when Windows can’t associate a document with a program.
Figure 3-10: The Open With dialog box enables you to select a program with which to open a document.
If you know enough about the document you’re attempting to open, you can enter a description of the
type of document it is in the dialog box. You can then choose which of the listed programs you want to
use to open the program. If you like, you can set up a permanent association between documents that
have this file name extension and the selected program by choosing the Always use check box. If you’re
not sure, however, you would be wise not to select that check box!
If you take a wild guess, and the program you chose can’t open the document, you’ll just see a
message to that effect, and no harm done. Then again, the program you chose might open the
document and take its best shot at displaying it. When that happens, you’re likely to end up with a mess.
For example, Figure 3-11 shows a photograph that I opened in the Notepad program. Because Notepad
doesn’t have a clue as to how to display a photo, it just displays the meaningless mess shown in the
figure.
Windows XP Bible