Hi,

I received a Valentine's Day e mail last night from my sister-in-law containing two .jpg files. I saw the yellow and red Kodak icon and I knew that she had sent me some pics so I right clicked on the first one and I received the message: "This file has no program associated with it. Create an association in Folder Options." Where in Folder Options? I do have Kodak Easy Share on my computer and I have looked at the Kodak site just now, but I was unable to find anything about creating a file association. I had e mailed her but she has not replied yet and I thought that maybe she thought that I knew how to create file associations but I don't. Can anybody tell me how to?

Jeannie your Kodak easy share should be in your program files..

How to create file associations for unassociated file types
You may want to create a file association for a file type that is not associated with a program in your computer. There are two common reasons for this action:
• A program such as a database produces file reports with extensions that are not registered in Windows XP.
• You receive e-mail message attachments that are created in a program that is not installed on your computer, but there is an installed program that can read these files.
To create file association:
1. Right-click a file with the extension that you want to change, and then click Open, or double-click the file.
2. Windows XP displays a dialog box that indicates that no program is associated with this file. The dialog box offers two choices for creating an association:
• Use the Web service to find the appropriate program
• Select the program from a list
Unless you want to find and download software that opens this file type, the best choice is to select the program from a list.

3. Windows displays a dialog box that displays programs that are installed on the computer. If the program that you want to use for this file type is not listed, click Browse to locate the appropriate software. Select the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file check box.

Warning... some jpeg graphic files, although saved as normal (JFIF) .jpg files may not open because they are compressed and streamed with different settings than standard .jpg files. Windows opens normal .jpg files by default, so, before creating any association, check if you can open other .jpg files normally. If you can, associating this compressed .jpeg file will open but probably standard ones will no longer work.

Try opening them using your Kodak program or some professional image editor, then export it as normal .jpg file.

Chris

Best bet is to download and install the free IrfanView. This sweet little program will take care of just about all your image viewing, and you can select the files you want to associate to it during the install.

Hi jimholly,

I already have Irfanview on my computer. Do I handle these files like we handled the pics that I made last year?

Futher info on file. I have the e mail and I click on the Kodak icon and the file won't open. I have tried with Irfanview. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I opened Irfanview and then I opened the e mail and I clicked on one of the icons and I received that message that says I should create a file association in the folder options. Why is it telling me that I should go to the folder options to create the file association?

Jeannie, I hate to sound negative but from my experience with the Kodak Photo Gallery (or "whatever" it is they call it) ... they try to monopolize all your pictures on your entire computer. They want you to set "file associations" for ALL pictures to open in their (Kodak) software. You do NOT have to do this unless you want to use their program pretty much exclusively. Personally, I don't like their software at all and will not use it - PERIOD!

Normally, you can open any picture in any imaging program so long as you designate where you want to do that. When I installed Irfanview a couple of years or so ago, I set all my "file associations" with them because it is the easiest and quickest (albeit sometimes limited) program to use. However, this does NOT mean I must use Irfanview for everything. I can open any picture I want anywhere I want by using the "Open With" command in the right-click context menu.

For me, Irfanview is more of a "viewing station" if I want to quickly check an image detail or do a simple resize. (Plus Irfanview has a GREAT easy-to-use batch conversion feature.) Otherwise, I do all my photo manipulating functions in more full-featured image programs. Of course, you are free to make your own choices, and I would say to just use whatever is easiest for you.

Jeannie ......... Here is a screenshot of the "Open With" function that I am speaking about in my above post. I hope you can make out what it says as I tried to reduce the size so as not to "overflow" the width of this page.

As you can see, at the top of the list are various imaging programs from which to choose. If the one you want is not listed there, then you select the very last item ("Choose Program") which will open another window with more choices in it.

If you can open .jpg files on your system OK, then I would be wary of the ones in the email. There are some viruses that are disguised as .jpg files that slip through in emails.

http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/a/jpgflaw.htm

http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/art.../va_perrun.html

Also, the files could be disguised as something else, such as virii.jpg.exe or virii.jpg.vb, since most systems by default won't show the .exe extension. However, the file would have most likely run if this were the case.

Do you have the option to 'Save attachments' with these files? You might do that, then manually scan them with your anti-virus. If they are clean, then look at the properties of the files to see if there's anything unusual listed there.