Mac Office files get associated with Win Office 2007

[mhuntley]

Upgraded to Parallels 3.0 - went fine.
Installed Office 2007 in WinXP VM - went fine (but took long time)

Subsequently: when in the Mac Finder with Parallels not running, double-click on a Mac Word doc (.doc) and find that it wants to launch Parallels and Word 2007!! Similarly, with Excel and Powerpoint files. This is not what I want at all!

Solution: use Finder Get Info to reassociate Mac Office docs with Mac Office apps.

But why should I have to do this? Just another example of Microsoft tyranny :) , or something to do with how Parallels is attempting to provide more seamless exchange between host and guest OS?

Martin

[Rachel Faith]

I have noticed a similar problem and it is for SURE a Parallels issue.

When I am in AOL reading mail in my VM and click a Link... it opens Firefox on my MAC.

I am not in coherence because I CANNOT GET THAT TO WORK AT ALL.

I have noticed this in Office too....

Something is VERY VERY WRONG with this 3.0 coding that the programs go not know what they are doing.

[valechox]

I also confirm that all Mac Office 2004 native mac documents are now associated with the Parallels/Win Office 2007 respective applications doc for Word, xls for Excel, etc.)

My install was an upgrade install from 2.5 to 3.0.

Although simple to re-associate, this needs to be addressed so that it does not occur.

Will the current mis-associations be addressed for correction by Parallels installer?

[voidptr]

I hit this too.. Any doc or xls attachments in Entourage or Mail.app are launching Parallels, and I don't even have office installed in XP.

Please fix this so it doesn't do this again.

[Rachel Faith]

So to make sure we get this right for them... cause they are likely to post some INANE reply otherwise.... or inspite of our efforts.... I wanna recap.

We are seeing apps IN the VMs launching apps on the OSX side ??

You are IN windows and what you DO there is crossing over to OSX and launching, controling or changing settings and apps in OSX outside of the VM ??

Does it work the OTHER WAY TOO for anyone? You click something in OSX and suddenly something happens inside the VM ??

[valechox]

Rachel,

No. I am seeing documents created on the mac side, in MS Office for Mac 2004 attempt to open the associated office app inside of Parallels in my WinXP VM.

Hope that's clear....

[mhuntley]

As with Valechox, my current experience is that on the Mac side, with Parallels not running, my Mac Office files became associated with the Office apps on the Parallels/WinXP side.

(I generally don't use Office on the VM side - except in this case for beginning to explore Office 2007 - so have not experienced docs on the VM side launching apps on the OSX side.)

Martin

[Rachel Faith]

WOW... so it IS both ways...

Mac OS takes over some VM running or Not running and VM takes over some OSX apps.

HORRID LEAKS !!

This code was sure a NEW batch and not biult on the old one... we had NONE of these issues before.

[wingdo]

Yup ... "Smart Select" was introduced in 3.0. And yes, it certainly does still need work. Sadly not all the bugs reported in the Beta forums have been resolved. The next patch is expected to have an option to disable smart select, and that should resolve these issues. It's a really neat idea (double click on a Visio document in OS X and have Windows Visio open up the file) but as it is currently implemented, I'd rather not have it running. The one feature I really like is hitting a mailto: link in IE 6 and having Entourage open up. That is neat, but it's not worth the aggravation.

[wingdo]

So to make sure we get this right for them... cause they are likely to post some INANE reply otherwise.... or inspite of our efforts.... I wanna recap.

We are seeing apps IN the VMs launching apps on the OSX side ??

You are IN windows and what you DO there is crossing over to OSX and launching, controling or changing settings and apps in OSX outside of the VM ??

Does it work the OTHER WAY TOO for anyone? You click something in OSX and suddenly something happens inside the VM ??

From the Parallels 3.0 product description page ....

New! Open Windows files with Mac programs and Mac files in Windows programs with Parallels SmartSelect


I'll be happy once we can disable this feature.

[Rachel Faith]

YIKES....

So they thought THIS would be good ???

Seems like they totally DID NOT think this through.

When I am in Windows I for DAMNED SURE DO NOT want it launching OSX apps.

And when I am in OSX I in NO WAY EVER UNDER GODS GREEN EARTH want to have it open stuff in Windows.

WHAT where they thinking ??

What makes it WORSE... Is my mouse is still STUCK in the VM so if I am there and it opens something in OSX I am seriously hurting.

This is not a feature... it is piss poor thinking and a pittiful implementation of a BAD IDEA.

[DerekS]

I agree with you - I don't think it's a good feature either.

The good news is that this has already been brought up in another thread, and Parallels has agreed to remove it in the next version.

http://forum.parallels.com/thread12564.html

[wingdo]

It was a feature request in these forums which brought us Smart Select. I myself would like to be able to toggle this off. That said, I can understand why some people would want it. For many people, a primary reason to need Windows is Outlook. I can see where someone would want to be able to open a word document they receive from a co-worker directly into Word:mac. It would beat the alternative of dragging the file out of outlook to your windows desktop and then from the wondows desktop to your OS X desktop (or saving to a shared folder) and then double clicking to open it in Office:mac. It *is* more convienient to just open the file in Windows and have the action you want to happen actually happen. For me it is the other way around. I have oodles of Visio diagrams and Project documents that are on my OS X hard drive, I do like the idea of just double clicking on the diagram in Finder and having Visio launch and open up the file.

The problem is ..... I want to be able to control what happens on a file by file basis. There are perhaps 6 file extensions I'd want passed back and forth between the two, and the rest I'd want stopped right where they lie. A prime example of why this is bad to be an either / or situation is web site browsing in OS X. Many sites try to install little trojan programs on Windows machines. We in the Mac community have been blessed by the fact that these little "setup.exe" files are 100% ignored by Safari etc. Well no longer, they will run in your Windows VM, even if you are browsing with an OS X browser.

That is why Smart Select needs to be configurable.

[simplicity]

I really like the feature, but I do want it configurable as well..

[Pondering]

Yes I agree, without the ability to configure it it isn't really a feature but more of a bug. No one wants all of their Documents associated with a VM.

[simplicity]

If you want to open a file, right click (or ctrl-click) the file you want to open, select open with, select choose application, choose the old app, make sure Always open with is checked.

That should solve it as a temporary work around until they fix the issue.

[kezo]

Yes I agree, without the ability to configure it it isn't really a feature but more of a bug. No one wants all of their Documents associated with a VM.

+1 Co-sign.

[marc1]

If you want to open a file, right click (or ctrl-click) the file you want to open, select open with, select choose application, choose the old app, make sure Always open with is checked.

That should solve it as a temporary work around until they fix the issue.


I have the same problem, but this fix does not work. I have CSV files that launch Parallels whenever I open then.

I selected "Always Open with" which works that one time, but it does not remember or work the next time.

Is there a place in the Mac OSX to assign global file extension associations?

[mac_ads]

I'm having the same problem as marc1 - I select a Word document, right-click and select "Open With", choose Word for Mac and tick the "Always Open With" box and then the file opens in Word. And yet when I come to open another Word doc it's back to Windows again.

Unfortuantely I can't change the Windows file associations as that partition contains a version of XP that is connected to the heavily locked-down RM network at my school and I am unable (due to access privaledges) to run unauthorised software in XP, which include Word for Mac.

What I need is a way to change all file associations for .doc files within OSX to open Word for Mac. I'm happy in the Terminal if that helps.

Any ideas?

[valechox]

To re-associate files with the proper app.....

Select one file that needs re-associating. Command - I or right click and get info

Choose the right app in the open with section and also click the change all button.

[kelmon]

In all honesty I'm really happy with the SmartSelect feature since it allows me to use OS X applications that beat their Windows counterparts (give me TextMate over NotePad any day of the week) and Windows applications when they are better (Office 2007 is better than the current Office:mac 2004). However, while some fine tuning seems to be necessary I do seem to have encountered a couple of issues:

1. Windows Outlook 2007 seems to be opening all URLs in OS X Safari. Safari isn't even my default browser under OS X and I can't seem to find a way to set Outlook to use Internet Explorer 7 (not my favourite browser but necessary for our office network, unfortunately).

2. Now that Office document files stored under OS X are associated with the Windows applications I don't have icons for these documents anymore. Is there a way to set icons under OS X for particular file types?

[ReneS]

Hi,

Don't have that problem. .doc files on my mac side open in Mac Office and not in my VM with Office 2007. So either I'm lucky or smart select does not work in my configuration.

Just to share...

Rene

Macbook pro, core 2 duo 2.33, 3 gig ram, Parallels 4128, windows XP sp2 with Office 2007

[SteveC]

Having upgraded and really appreciating being able to run and integrate windows specific databases on my Mac, I nearly freaked when 16 years worth files suddenly defaulted to Office running in XP. All I did was reboot the machine! No permission request, no indication that it had happened, until I tried to open on. OK when I opened a folder all the icons had changed but I aged instantly. Now I know that it is there, being able to toggle batches for a particular piece of work, will be really useful. But a genuine thanks for and to the support forum, and those of you that pointed me to toggling in 'get info'.