On 7/10/2011 6:23 AM, Michael Lawlor wrote: > I have just moved Photoshop Elements onto the machine I have Finale on > and get the message that *.ASV files are assigned to Photoshop; do I > want to reasign them to Finale ["Yes" was my response].
On Windows, the application that an extension is "assigned" to is the one which will attempt to open a file with that extension when you double-click it. So .doc is assigned to Word, .mus is assigned to FInale, etc. In this particular case, it's mostly irrelevant. .asv files are autosave files for Finale and selective color data files for Photoshop. These aren't file types that you would usually double-click on to open. For Finale, if you wanted to use an autosaved file, you'd probably rename it to .mus first; I'm not familiar with Photoshop, but that's probably a file that gets loaded when the app is open. As an example where file associations matter, I have a text editor I like to use instead of the default Notepad. So I have .txt associated with this other editor, and when I double-click text files, it opens instead of Notepad. I also have a couple of different versions of Finale installed. Each one wants .mus for itself, so I have to be careful that the one I use most often (usually the most recent version) has the association. If I want to use one of the other versions to open a file, I start that version and then do File | Open to locate the file. Windows also has an item called "Open With" in the context (right-click) menu that lets you pick other applications which you'd like to use to open a given file type. This can be easier than opening the desired app first. File associations have nothing at all to do with which apps can access or open given file; it's all about which app is the default file handler when you double-click it, or choose another action from the context menu like Print. Why do these apps assign the file type for auxiliary files? Mostly so that they can also assign custom icons, but also just as a record of the file types they can work with. > What is the best way around conflicts like this? Can I create > different file extensions without confusing one of the programmes? > Should I reasign the file types each time - and never have the two > open at the same time? It's not really a conflict; you can't really make your own extensions; and there's no need to reassign the extensions or be careful which apps are open. Aaron. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
