The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

I've tried to assign various file types (JPG, PDF) to portable applications (IrfanView, PDF X-Change) without success. I'm running XP-SP3. Should I be able to do this, or is this capability only available for installed applications.

Thanks for any help.

I'm able to associate filetypes with irfanview and pdf x-change just fine on WinXP SP3. How did you try to do it? irfanview can let you associate compatible image filetypes in its settings menu. PDF X-Change also has will let you register pdf filetype in its preference menu if you remove portable.dat file but that will force it to save its settings in the registry.

Otherwise you can manually associate by going through the 'open with' dialogue in win xp via right click menu. If that doesn't work then there must be something else that's wrong.

See this thread http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... f=2&t=4915

Following up with I am Baas suggestion, Coffee's entry is at http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1317

This site has an extensive list of extensions that can be used with Coffee >> http://softwarespot.wordpress.com/misc/

Thank you for your replies.

I just added IrfanView Portable and PDF X-Change Portable, then uninstalled IrfanView and PDF X-Change from my Program Files folder.

My JPGs open OK, but I can't get the PDF files associated with PDF X-Change Portable. Both the 'right click Open With' and the 'File Types' dialogues lead to the 'Open With' box and I select the PDF X-Change Portable exe file, but it will not appear in the 'Programs' section of this dialogue box. I went through all of the Preferences and could not find the place to register PDF files; can you tell me where this is?

Thanks again for your help.

In the pdf x-change app folder there will be a portable.dat file. Deleting or renaming it will disable portable mode. The program will now save settings in the registry and a new option will appear preferences menu called 'File Associations'. You can put back portable.dat file after done and maybe delete 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tracker Software' in regedit if you want.

Both the 'right click Open With' and the 'File Types' dialogues lead to the 'Open With' box and I select the PDF X-Change Portable exe file, but it will not appear in the 'Programs' section of this dialogue box.

I don't get this. Did you forget to click the check box that says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file"? It should work because if it's not, you're either doing something wrong or windows is broken.

Try the coffee thing or use filetypesman http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1478

I had the same problem with PDF X-Change some time ago.
You can use ExtMan to fix it. If the .pdf extension is still registered, just edit it to open with PDF X-Change. If not, you'll have to create the new file type and select the PDF viewer to open it.

I did have the check box for 'Always use...' checked, but since the utility could not return the PDF X-Change Portable version, it didn't work.

I used the filetypesman utility to do the association and got it to work.

Thanks to all for your great help.

I've also used nirsofer's filetypesman, and it's very good --
and I also use this great portable gem from Ramesh Srinivasan, MSoft MVP - it's called OpenWithAdd :

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/openwithadd.htm

-- some friends have found this a lot easier to use/understand than Nirsoft's great utility

btw - this my 1st post, thanks so much for what I've gained so far from this great site -
faster, lighter, better computing - more joy!

Old thread update:

I use Coffee with some custom configs a few years back (as Baas mentioned above).

Some programs on the site that take a novel approach to file associations that lets you quickly turn associations on including XNViewMP (includes a program "Associate files with XnViewMP.exe" ) and XMind's much simpler Associate_XMind_File.bat. You can also use a file manager like MulitCommander that has it's own file associations.

Related threads:

• PEM
• Gunners File Type editor