Audacity Forum

Certainly adding Audacity to "Open with" for an audio file type works fine on a computer that has never had Audacity installed.

The installer should though ideally be able to set registry keys so that Audacity once installed is seen as a "Recommended Program" for particular file types in "Open with". Also the installer (or the Audacity interface) should ideally give the option to associate certain file types with Audacity.

The problem you have in this thread comes if you have had other instances of "audacity.exe" installed or located in the past in different locations, as you would if you had Audacity Beta then installed Audacity 2.0. As the Audacity Release Notes say:

the Audacity executable cannot be added to the Explorer "Open with" hover menu if you have another version of Audacity on the system which is also called "audacity.exe".

It is a Windows limitation. The same issue arises if an older "open with" registry key still points to "audacity.exe", because the Audacity uninstaller doesn't remove open with keys (or give you an option to do so).

As far as I know this is not an issue if you install Audacity 2.0.0 over 1.2.6. 2.0.0 would by default install into the same %PROGRAM FILES% Audacity directory as 1.2.6 and the open with associations should continue as they were before.

In all these cases, the simple answer is to rename the 2.0 "audacity.exe" to some other name such as "audacity 2.exe" then you should be able to add it to the open with menu.

As an alternative to trying to sort problems like this out in the Windows Registry, which is dangerous, you could try
http://defaultprogramseditor.com/ or similar programs (search on Google for others). Or indeed in some cases a registry cleaner may help as rgdave confirms.



Gale

Yep - running CCleaner fixed the problem. Thanks to rgdave for the tip, and to Gale Andrews for the explanation!

No need to run CCleaner or anything. Gale's solution is simple and works. Just change the filename eg to audacity2.exe and the association then works without a hitch.

Many thanks

Gale Andrews wrote:Certainly adding Audacity to "Open with" for an audio file type works fine on a computer that has never had Audacity installed.

It also works on a Win 7 PC that currently has both 1.3.14 beta and 2.0 installed - mine!

Gale Andrews wrote:The problem you have in this thread comes if you have had other instances of "audacity.exe" installed or located in the past in different locations, as you would if you had Audacity Beta then installed Audacity 2.0.

Not necessarily true!

I have both v1.3.14 and v2.0 installed and can happily use the technique I described to change the file association from 2.0 to 1.3.14 and back again. There is no problem - on my system. When I take the "Open With..." option from the right-click on the .aup file I see the attached. Having the text and logo for both the 1.3.14 beta and the v2.0 identical is very confusing; but clicking the other one effects the switch-over.

reed1e wrote:No need to run CCleaner or anything. Gale's solution is simple and works. Just change the filename eg to audacity2.exe and the association then works without a hitch.

I'm no expert, but: in that case what would one expect the state of the system to be after the *next* upgrade?

thanks for the workaround all good now

mjackson14609 wrote:

reed1e wrote:No need to run CCleaner or anything. Gale's solution is simple and works. Just change the filename eg to audacity2.exe and the association then works without a hitch.

I'm no expert, but: in that case what would one expect the state of the system to be after the *next* upgrade?

The next upgrade installed into the same folder would install audacity.exe (for 2.0.1) and leave the renamed older executable for 2.0.0 in situ.

To make "open with" work with the new 2.0.1 executable you would have to delete the 2.0.0 executable and rename the 2.0.1 executable to the same name that you gave to the 2.0.0 executable.


Gale

PGA wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:Certainly adding Audacity to "Open with" for an audio file type works fine on a computer that has never had Audacity installed.

It also works on a Win 7 PC that currently has both 1.3.14 beta and 2.0 installed - mine!

Gale Andrews wrote:The problem you have in this thread comes if you have had other instances of "audacity.exe" installed or located in the past in different locations, as you would if you had Audacity Beta then installed Audacity 2.0.

Not necessarily true!

I have both v1.3.14 and v2.0 installed and can happily use the technique I described to change the file association from 2.0 to 1.3.14 and back again.

I am sure the others here are using your (the correct) technique, but are both your Audacity executables for 1.3.14 and 2.0 named the same?


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:I am sure the others here are using your (the correct) technique, but are both your Audacity executables for 1.3.14 and 2.0 named the same?

Yes, they are. Both installs are totally "vanilla", taking all the default values as set by the installer software.

PGA wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:I am sure the others here are using your (the correct) technique, but are both your Audacity executables for 1.3.14 and 2.0 named the same?

Yes, they are. Both installs are totally "vanilla", taking all the default values as set by the installer software.

I suspect the difference is that all of us who are having the problem had 1.3.14 installed *and uninstalled it, per the instructions for upgrading, before installing 2.0.* That's certainly the case for me.