Missing file associations after upgrading to Office 2003

[Ron B.]

Hi,
We have run into a problem with Office 2003. We upgraded
several pcs from Office 2000 Pro to Office 2003 Pro, ran
the web updates and now file associations for jpg, bmp,
etc files are gone. We are running W2K Pro SP4 with all
the latest updates. Apparently there is a registry fix
for this, anyone know what causes this problem and how to
fix it??
Thanks,
Ron. B.

 

[Mary Sauer]

Right-click any image, properties, opens with... change, point to whatever
application you want to open the file.

 

[Guest]

Mary,
Yes, I know how to set file associations. My problem is
that all those file types HAD pgms associated with them,
but after the Office 2003 install, those associations
disappeared. I was wondering why this happened, and if it
has happened to anyone else. And if it did, how did they
fix it?
Thanks!

 

[Ron. B.]

OK, we found the problem. Office 2003 uninstalls Photo
Editor and installs Picture Manager. So our file
associations were cut, we just started up Pic Mgr and set
the associations via the Tools menu. So that is done.
HOWEVER, thumbnail previews in explorer won't work for
those files with the broken associations. We found a
registry hack to take care of those, have to create a new
key for each broken association (we did one for GIF and
JPG).
Hack is as follows:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\
..jpg
Create new key named ShellEx
Create a new key from ShellEx called {BB2E617C-0920-11d1-
9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
Value data for this new key is:
{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}

Ron. B.