How to decide which VM starts when clicking on office doc?

R

robert granger

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I have two VMs, one from a transfer that is rather bloated and another new from scratch windows 7 vm. when I double click on a word document, it always starts ms word from the closed (transferred) vm. is there a way to get it to use the newer, slimmer install so that I can eventually remove the copy rescued from my dead windows 7 laptop?
Thanks
Rob
 
could it by VM name order? I don't know for sure. I temporarely renamed the old pmv and then clicked on a word doc and it opened in the desired vm. then when I renamed it back I made it Xsomething so that it came after the newer VM in the folder list... Or maybe it is the last active VM. anyone from Parallels know?
Thanks
Rob
 
Parallels Desktop creates a small Mac application (helper application) for every Windows application. The small Mac application is what you see in the Dock or anywhere else in the Mac user interface. The small Mac application talks to Parallels, tells it what files to open or what process to bring to the front in the VM, etc.

Since the Windows applications are actually represented by small Mac applications (because the Mac can only know about Mac applications), then the same rules that apply to other Mac applications will apply to the Windows applications. I don't know what all the rules are (maybe the Launch Services documentation at developer.apple.com explains it) but they can be overridden using "Open With..." (see below).

So you have three options:
A) Right click the document and select "Open With..." to tell the Finder what small Mac application to use for the file.
or
B) Do the same as A by selecting the file and using "Get Info". Click the "Open With..." menu and select a small Mac application to use for the file. Then click "Change All..." to apply the preference to all files of the same type.
or
C) Delete all the small applications for the other VM.

The small Mac applications are stored in the VM folder (.pvm) in a folder called "Windows Applications".

The Dock contains an alias for each VM that points to a folder in the .pvm called "vmname Windows Applications" where vmname is the name of the virtual machine. This folder is organized like your VM's Start menu and contains Mac aliases to the applications in the above mentioned "Windows Applications" folder.

The Mac's Applications folder contains for each VM an alias called "vmname Windows Applications" (where vmname is the name of the virtual machine) that points to the above mentioned "Windows Applications" folder in the .pvm. This is the easiest way to navigate to the small Mac applications. Go this way when you use the "Open with..." option or when you want to delete the small Mac applications.
 
Ok, that make sense, but....

I have two window7 vms. Since I didn't setup any of these mini-apps, I am guessing the tools did. So, in what order does it process the mini-app. I renamed the troublesome VM and then word started running from the second VM without me doing anything, so there is some order there.
 
Parallels Desktop creates the mini apps automatically when you have the "Share Windows applications with Mac OS X" option selected in Configure... -> Options -> Shared Applications. If you choose option C, first make sure that you deselect this option first in the VM.

The rules I was talking about include the rules used to select which application launches when you open a document from the Finder (the SmartSelect options will affect this also). I'm not disagreeing with you that alphabetical order of the path matters. I'm just saying that the exact rules might not be documented anywhere (I haven't checked) in the case where multiple duplicate apps exist.
 
NO disagreement. I was only questioning if the order had some determination on which VM got control if both had shared apps selected. I had no idea if it was the order or that I disabled the bad one and reopend the good one or what happend. What you said makes perfect sense now. I will go disable the apps sharing on the older vm!
Thank you so much for bearing with me :)
Rob
 
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