Failure by Association

Q: I GET AN E MAIL WITH PICTURE ATTACHMENTS I CAN NOT OPEN THEM. I GET A POP UP THAT SAY’S THE FILE DOES NOT HAVE A PROGRAM ASSOCIATED WITH IT FOR PERFORMING THIS ACTION. GO TO THE CONTROL PANEL TO THE FOLDER OPTIONS AND CREATE AN ASSOCIATION. WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT, AND WHAT DO I DO.

WARREN R.
A: You would be surprised how many people suffer in silence or the get glazed over eyes look like a deer in the headlights when they see this message. This message stems from a file that your computer tries to open, but it doesn’t know which program to use. See, every file has a file extension. The most known is probably .com. These files extensions exist for everything like your word processing documents (.doc, .rtf. .txt), your music (.wav, .mp3), your video (. wmv, .avi, mp4), and the one that you are having issues with, pictures or images (.jpeg, .tif). In the same way that keys are designed to open a specific lock, certain programs are designed to open specific types of files.
Your problem seems to be that there is not a designated program to open images with the extension of the attachments that you are receiving. You may find that you have opened images and pictures before, but that does not necessarily mean that they have the same file extension as the ones sent via email. There are two ways to address this situation.
The first is to download the file to your desktop. The icon for it should look strange because there isn’t a file associated to it yet. Next, you right click on the icon and from the menu that appears, select the Open With header. Another box should appear with a list of all of the programs installed on your computer. A save selection is Microsoft Paint. This is on most computers and can handle various image file format extensions. This will open the particular file that you selected, but you may find that you have to do this with each file that you are sent.
The way to avoid this is to follow the advice of the message and change settings for your computer. In order to do this you click the start button in the lower left of your screen. Next, you should see Control Panel in the menu. Under the Control Menu header you should see one of two things depending on your operating system. If you have the classic view you should see an icon named Folder Options. If you have XP or Vista you may need to look in the Appearance & Themes header to find the Folder Options icon. Once Folder Options is open, click the tab named File Types. It is here where you can scroll down to file extension that you have issues with and select the change button to associate it with MS Paint.