I just installed the free Microsoft Office 2013 Preview, released today. It is on my Windows 7 desktop and a Windows 8 (the last running in a virtual machine).
Here is how collisions with file associations are handled: 1. Office 2013 over Office 2010 On my desktop, all of the icons for Microsoft Office documents changed to the new format. Now when I double-click on them, Office 2013 applications open the document. In the folder where the files are, there are also new thumbnail icons for the same documents. However, the context menu for .docx and .xslx shows that both 2013 and the original 2010 applications as available in the "Open With ..." dialog. Either opens the document in the appropriate applications and is still operating without problems; there seems to be no interference between 2010 and 2013 programs. Also, the LibreOffice file associations on the context menu were intact. (I am using LibreOffice on the machine where I did this.) Likewise for Quattro Pro X5 in the case of Excel documents. 2. Office on ODF In this case, there is no modification of the file associations. They remain set to LibreOffice. However, Office 2013 applications are now offered in place of the Office 2010 on the context menu Open With ... dialog. (I assume that I can add the Office 2010 ones back in, but I want to do interop testing with Office 2013 anyhow, especially now that Excel supports OpenFormula in its open and save of ODF 1.2 documents.) When I opened a downloaded .odt using the Microsoft Word association, two things happened: The ODT document opened cleanly in "Protected View" because the file was from the Internet (and this is recorded in the file-server location where the file was stored). In addition, a dialog box opened that noticed Microsoft Word is not the default program and "would I like to select the file types that Word should open?" I declined. I could have turned off the message also. 3. Takeaways I think this is a good model to follow. Microsoft has smoothed it over time and it covers the bases while being friendly with the presence of other preferences and applications. I have screen captures of the cases that I described, if anyone is interested. If there is a Windows 8 Certification bugzilla that these would fit on, I am happy to add them there. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 18:13 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Suggestion - file format The setting of file associations, and there removal, are generally during install and uninstall. I've not seen this at other startups of productivity software. (The exceptions are default browser and default mail handler when a starting application notices that it is not the default.) For AOOi, having a Tools | Options ... general dialog/wizard for controlling file associations seems useful for having it available at any time without getting in the users face. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Douglas Pitonyak [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 15:05 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Suggestion - file format On 07/12/2012 09:41 AM, Rob Weir wrote: [ ... ] > 2) Each time we we start up AOO check to make sure we are the default > handler for ODF files. If we are not, then prompt the user whether > they want to make AOO be the default handler. This protects the user > if another application takes over our file extensions. Also have an > option for the user to disable this check. > > Maybe something to consider in 3.5 or 3.6? > > -Rob > Checking on every start would be annoying if I don't want OOo as the default. if possible, check to see if it used to be the default and it no longer is. Prompt the user. if user says no, then next start, do not prompt again. On the other hand, if this capability becomes part of OOo, then provide some mechanism for the user to cause it to happen from inside of OOo. -- Andrew Pitonyak My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
