How to Change File Type Associations in Windows XP

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews, today I'm going to show you how to change file type associations in Windows XP. To begin let's go to the computer, and on my desktop I'm going to create just a simple text file. If I open up this text document, I've typed some text, you notice that it's opened up using notepad, let's save my text, and we want to change that to open up with Word pad. To do so, click on the start bar down at the very bottom, and we want to select my computer. From here, go to tools, and select folder options. And we want to go to the file types tab. What this is doing is loading in all of the file types that my computer supports as well as the programs that run them. The one that we want to change is TXT for text file. So find TXT in that list and select it. As you can see, it now opens with notepad and we want to change that to open up with Word pad. So click the change button, and select Word pad. Now press okay. This is changed to open with Word pad. Close out of that dialogue and close my computer and open up the new text document. As you can see it is no longer opened up automatically with Notepad, but instead has opened up with the Word pad editor. It's that easy to change how your file types open in Windows XP. My name is Dave Andrews, and I've just showed you how to change file associations in Windows XP."