Launch Mac application from XP association

hayes_philip · May 26, 2006

I am using parallels on a Macbook in order to run XP.
I need to use Outlook 2002 on XP for my work e-mail (due to salesforce.com integration).
One thing that is a real pain is when I get an attachment (word, excel, ppt etc.) I need to copy this onto my mac interface and then open in in OS X with Office 2004. I am reluctant to install office on my XP installation.
My life would be a lot simpler if I could associate .doc, xls, .ppt files in XP with my MAC version of Office and then when I double click on an attachment in Outlook 2002, it would open up on the MAC.

Hope this makes sense.

Great product by the way.

Philip Hayes

Dragon 32, external tape player, 14" colour TV

James Bond 007 · May 26, 2006

hayes_philip said:
I am using parallels on a Macbook in order to run XP.
I need to use Outlook 2002 on XP for my work e-mail (due to salesforce.com integration).
One thing that is a real pain is when I get an attachment (word, excel, ppt etc.) I need to copy this onto my mac interface and then open in in OS X with Office 2004. I am reluctant to install office on my XP installation.
My life would be a lot simpler if I could associate .doc, xls, .ppt files in XP with my MAC version of Office and then when I double click on an attachment in Outlook 2002, it would open up on the MAC.

Hope this makes sense.

Great product by the way.

Philip Hayes

Dragon 32, external tape player, 14" colour TV

I don't think that can be done at this time. If you do not want to install Office just to view the files, consider download the Microsoft Word Viewer, Excel Viewer and PowerPoint Viewer from the Microsoft site. These softwares can be used to view the Office files in Windows but you cannot edit them.

hayes_philip · May 27, 2006

Hi, don't want to sound funny but that's why I posted this in the wish list, I know it can't be done at the moment.
Thanks for the suggestion re: word viewer though will do that.

Phil

Scott Willsey · May 27, 2006

I don't see how this would be possible - you are asking a vm to be aware that it is being hosted and to allow the host to intrude upon the vm by intercepting specific actions. Sounds impossible, not to mention like a great way of asking for stability issues as the OS's try to intercept each others actions.

James Bond 007 · May 27, 2006

hayes_philip said:
Hi, don't want to sound funny but that's why I posted this in the wish list, I know it can't be done at the moment.
Thanks for the suggestion re: word viewer though will do that.

Phil

Yes, of course you are right. I assumed that was a question.

hayes_philip · May 28, 2006

Hi Scott,

Yep, doesn't sound easy, but I'm sure the guys at parallels could come up with something.
Perhaps a small Windows based app running in the guest OS which would be associated with the windows office documents and would then in turn make some sort of call to the host OS, passing the requested file and launching it.
It seems to me that if they are going to be able to allow copying of files from a guest OS to host OS by dragging and dropping, then triggering an application on the host OS is just an extension of this.
But then, I'm not developer so I don't know whether the second part of this is possible or not.
It would be a cool feature though.

CDN · May 31, 2006

One approach might be to associate double-click with a script which just copies the file to a networked folder on the Mac side, and then have a script (folder action?) running on that folder to launch any file that is added to that folder?

Djoh · May 31, 2006

I think this could definitely be done: XP/whatever would be the one responsible for sending PD a command telling it to open a file in some Mac app, perhaps auto-copying the file-to-be-opened to a temp folder in the Shared folder. That ability could be bestowed by the "Parallels Tools" installed int he guest OS.
It's a really cool idea.

However, I really like that fact that Windoze has no idea there's a Mac OS surrounding it, because if Windows virused/messed up my Mac OS in Any way, I'd be very upset about it.
At best, they could implement this but leave it as an option that defaults to "disabled", but I personally don't like the security of Windows interacting too closely with my Mac OS.

JWM · May 31, 2006

and vice versa!

I was just thinking: would it not be great if a windows dvd/cd/program could be recognised so it would start vm windows while being in osx? I (still) have to explain to my folks at home to start parallels first....