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Open the floppy file(s).

I have five floppy disks with tax files, one for each of the past five years. Last year after I copied them to the disks, I assured my self that they were intact and would display exactly as shown in the tax program. I used them several time afterwords for reference and then one day my hard drive failed and was displaces. I was happy to had the files backed-up - until today.
When I try to access the files I get the familiar pop-up named OPEN WITH that displays the message "Click on the program you want to use to open the files".
1. I really don't want to open this with notepad, but when I try I get a lot of mumbo-jumbo hieroglyphics - meaningless to me.
2. What happened?
3. How can I fix it?

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Lee W, MVP

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BillDL

If the IRS is anything like our UK Tax offices, then the "mumbo-jumbo hieroglyphics" are probably exactly what the pen-pushing monkeys there see when they stare blankly at your tax return and then issue you with someone else's bill adjustment that takes a year to sort out - by which time their temporary contract of employment has terminated anyway.

Be careful with the "Open With" dialog, and be sure to UNcheck the "always use this program to open files of this type" box before scrolling down to your program. That is, of course, unless you are deliberately trying to reset a lost or changed file to program association back to what it should be, or to some other program.

As leew has said, you were probably so used to being able to double-click on these files and have them open in the associated program that has now not yet been reinstalled again. The "unknown file type" icon (the Microsoft/Windows flag icon) is the tell-tale indication that the file type has no association, unless you have now inadvertantly associated it with Notepad by leaving the aforesaid box Checked.

DO NOT, under any circumstances, click the "SAVE" menu option if you have one of these files open in Notepad or it will corrupt the file to such an extent that it will not open in the correct program when you reinstall it.

IF you HAVE reinstalled the Tax program since reinstalling Windows, BUT the file association still doesn't work, then you can do either of the following:

1. Open the Tax program and use the File Menu > "Open" option to try and reassociate it
or
2. Leave the "always use this program..." box CHECKED when opening the file with the program that you KNOW to be the correct one. If it doesn't appear in the list, then click the "other" button and browse to the correct program .exe.

Don't experiment unless you know for certain what program .exe is supposed to open these file types.

BTW, if you ever need to REassociate a wrongly associated file type to the correct program, you can force the "Open With ..." dialog from the Right-Click Menu option by holding the SHIFT key as you Right-Click on the file.

What are the file extensions of these files on floppy?