Can anyone help my landlady? (She's a Mac user, but I know very little about them, preferring Linux.) Yesterday, she updated Microsoft Office 2008 to SP2 (I think) when prompted. She used to have DOC files associated with Microsoft Word, as you'd expect, but that's gone and she can't get it back:
- now, when she tries to load a Doc file, the Mac tries to start iWork '06 Pages. It's a Trial version - she didn't even know it was on there, and never used it. Word still works, she can still launch it as normal and open files - so the Office installation appears fine. (She's contacted Microsoft by email in case they know something about this.)
So, we try to restore the standard file association using a method I looked up, which goes something like this:
- launch the "Get Info" menu for a Doc file
- under "Open With" it says "Pages (default)". There's a way to select another application, so she selects Microsoft Word and "Always Open With", then "Add". This should add Word to the list of applications for that file.
- Back on the "Get Info" menu, there's a "Change All" button, that is supposed to set the association for all files of that type.
- Hit that, the confirmation dialog seems to confirm what it's doing, but after she hits "Continue", things go back to how they were before: "Pages (default)". Microsoft Word does not even appear on the applications list. Finder has completely lost the change she just made.
edit: the procedure that is supposed to work is described on
this page - but it keeps reverting to Pages (default)
It's as if something is fighting this change. She has totally uninstalled iWork '06 now, but Finder
still associates Doc files with Pages (even though it's gone), and will not let her change that permanently.
Any ideas? (Something to do with permissions?)
edit: on further investigation, I suspect it's a problem with something called Launch Services, which I was not previously aware of. See:
Resetting Launch Services