- Set Default Program
- How To Change The Default Program To Open A File
- Change The Default Program
- Default Program Mac
In OS X, all file types have a default application that opens when you double click on them. If you double click on a PDF file or a PNG file, chances are that your Mac will open it in Preview, Apple’s default PDF and image file app. If you’ve given an app like Adobe Reader, for example, permission to set itself as the default PDF app, then all PDFs will open in Reader.
There are a number of ways you can change what’s called the “binding”, the mapping of file type to application in Microsoft Windows 7, but what I prefer is to use the Control Panel designed for the task ingeniously called “Default Programs”. Step 1: Select a file which you want to change, as I have selected the “New” file. Make sure that you have a backup of that file. Make sure that you have a backup of that file. Here, you can’t see the extension of the file because it is hidden.
Over time, you may have set apps as default that you no longer want to open your files. Conversely, you might want all JPG files to open in Preview, except one specific JPG file, which you’d like to open in Photoshop. Here’s how to make both of these situations work for you.
First up, to change the default app across all documents of a give file type, simply click on a file of that type, say, a PDF file. Then right-click on that file (or Control-click, if you like) and choose Get Info from the resulting contextual menu. Look toward the bottom of the Information window that will open up, and find the section that says “Open With:”
Click on the little triangle next to this section, or, if it’s already open, choose the app you’d like to set as that file type’s default from the pop up menu. Then, click on the Change All… button below that area, and from then on, all files of that type will attempt to open in the app you chose when you double click.
Now, if you’d like to open a specific file in a specific app, overriding the default app, simply right-click on the file, and then hit the Option key on your keyboard. The Open With contextual menu item will then change to “Always Open With,” and allow you to choose which Application you’d like to use to open this file with, all the time, no matter what the default app is set to.
Via: OS X Daily
Active1 year, 1 month ago
I have a number of .csv files. Some of them are comma delimited, some are tab delimited (maybe they should be called .tsv ..)
The
csv
extension gets associated with Excel when Excel is installed. However, if I open one of these files with excel, everything gets dumped into the same column and the comma is not interpreted as a delimiter.I can instead of File -> Import.., select the file, and choose the precise way to interpret the contents (delimiters, data types, etc.) But most of the time I just want to look at the file through a clear table view. I do not want to process it with Excel.
Is there a way to get Excel to auto-interpret the delimiter and show the CSV file as a proper table as soon as it's opened? I need this so I can use Excel as a quick viewer for such files.
I suspect there must be a way, otherwise Excel wouldn't associate itself with CSV files.
SzabolcsSzabolcs1,21344 gold badges1717 silver badges3434 bronze badges
8 Answers
While opening CSV files, Excel will use a system regional setting called
List separator
to determine which default delimiter to use.Microsoft Excel will open .csv files, but depending on the system's regional settings, it may expect a semicolon as a separator instead of a comma, since in some languages the comma is used as the decimal separator. (from Wikipedia)
On Windows, you can change the
List separator
setting in the Regional and Language Options
as specified on the Office support website :Change the separator in a CSV text file
- Click the Windows Start menu.
- Click Control Panel.
- Open the Regional and Language Options dialog box.
- Click the Regional Options Tab.
- Click Customize / Additional settings (Win10).
- Type a new separator in the List separator box.
- Click OK twice.
Note: this only works if the Decimal symbol is not also designated as comma (in line with the Wikipedia citation above). If it is, Excel will not use comma as the List separator, even if chosen. For many non-United States regions, comma is the default Decimal symbol.
On Mac OS X, this setting seems to be deduced from the decimal separator setting (in the Language & Region pane of System Preferences, go to Advanced). If the Decimal Separator is a point then the default CSV separator will be a comma, but if the Decimal Separator is a comma, then the default CSV separator will be a semicolon.
As you said yourself in the comment, there is an alternative for Mac users to quickly look at those CSV files. It's plugin for Quick Look called quicklook-csv that handles separator detection.
yosh m1,85333 gold badges1616 silver badges2424 bronze badges
zakinsterzakinster
If you are not looking to modify the format of the file, and are ONLY targeting Excel, you can use the following Excel trick to help you.
Add a new line at the top of the file with the text
'sep=,'
(including quotes) in order for Excel to open the file with ',' as the list separator.It´s a very easy trick to avoid changing your Windows regional settings and get a consistent result. But it is Excel specific.
user280725user280725
You don't need the quotes around the
sep=,
- as long as it's the first line of the file it'll work, at least with Excel 2016.I discovered that if the file is tab delimited,
Vylixsep=t
works fine, with and without the quotes.1,57433 gold badges1616 silver badges2222 bronze badges
Stephen HemingwayStephen Hemingway
Accepted answer is correct but I am a visual person. Here is every single step in screenshot format of how to do this in windows 10.
Sam BSam B
When the separator in the regional settings is not a comma but a semicolon (Dutch separator), rename the CSV file to a TXT file. Right-click the TXT file and select 'Open with' and select 'Excel'. In Excel select the first column, select data in the ribbon and separate text to columns.
Set Default Program
OR
Install LibreOffice and open the CSV file with LibreOffice Calc.
robinCTS4,09544 gold badges1616 silver badges2727 bronze badges
Eric VDBEric VDB
Be sure to inspect the CSV file in a simple editor like Notepad to verify it is properly formatted.
I added this answer after I solved a stupid bug wherein CSV files I created with VB weren't opened with separate columns in Excel. I discovered that the way I had written the lines wrapped each line with quotation marks. Excel hid the quotation marks and showed the whole line in column A, making it appear as though it ignored my comma separators.
edjedj
best way will be to save it in a text file with csv extension
AzizDAzizD
For Dutch I had a problem that Excel 2008 on Windows 7 did not adhere to RFC4180:
'Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas should be enclosed in double-quotes.' Best go program for mac.
A comma-separated file correctly had fields with a comma (Dutch decimal separator) enclosed in double quotes. In the Dutch locale the decimal separator is
,
and list separator is ;
so Excel could not read a file with ,
used for both (not even after explicitly changing the list separator to ,
in Control Panel).The input looks like:
How To Change The Default Program To Open A File
The solution was given by @user280725:
Use Notepad to insert as a first line:
Change The Default Program
(This means the Note of user @zakinster in his solution no longer needs to apply.)
Interesting: with the csv file still loaded, if you now set the locale to US English in Control Panel and save the file, it will have been converted to US English format (comma as list separator and dot as decimal separator).Paul OgilviePaul Ogilvie