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How to Include an Application in the Open With Dialog Box

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Illustrates how to ensure your application appears in the Open With menu and dialog box for desktop apps, and is available as a default Windows Store app for specified file types.

Instructions

For each file type, add your application to the OpenWithProgIds registry subkey.

Add your ProgID as a value name, with the value type of either REG_NONE or REG_SZ and an empty string as the data value.

The following registry examples show entries associating InfoPath and for Microsoft Visual Studio with the XML file type.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
   .xml
      OpenWithProgids
         InfoPath.Document.3 REG_SZ
         VisualStudio.xml.10.0 REG_SZ

Remarks

The OpenWithProgids subkey is preferred to OpenWithList to identify an application. For more information on these subkeys, see Setting Optional Subkeys and File Type Extension Attributes.

OpenWithList is intended only for legacy apps (must be .exe only) on operating systems prior to Windows XP.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
   .xml
      OpenWithList
         AlternateProgram1.exe
         AlternateProgram2.exe