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Knowledge base article 156

Associating Microsoft Office files (Excel, Word and others) with Ability applications

Windows (Vista and later) has a default program mechanism to decide which program opens a given file when you select it in Windows Explorer or from your Email program. Windows XP doesn't have a default program tool but you can still set defaults.

When Ability installs, it "registers" with Windows so that it's own file formats (AWW, AWS, ADB etc) become the default program.

It also tells Windows that it is able to open other file types such as Microsoft formats like DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX and it does this without insisting it be the default program (we don't know what other programs may be installed). If Windows can find no other handlers for a given file-type (e.g. DOC) it will make Ability the default.

You can see this in Windows Explorer - right click over a DOCX, or XLSX file and select Open with - the appropriate Ability application will be listed.

For most purposes, the Open With mechanism is enough. If you want to have Ability "take over" the file association, you need to change the default settings in Windows. This varies according to the version of Windows you are running - the links below will take you the appropriate Help site at microsoft.com: