Cannot open a file unless it has a file extension? 10.2

[Tom]

I have a client who is using 10.2 OSX and cannot open files unless she puts the file extension ex: .qxd, .psd, .ps? Help

[Lammy]

I've had similar troubles. When adding the extention doesn't work for Quark and Page maker I has a classic app called "File Typer".

[cari]

I didn't think OS X required file extensions, but have changed to using them as it improves the portability across different platforms.

What happens when you double click files without an extension?
From memory you'd then have the option to choose the correct application and once that's done it will work for all files created by that particular application...

WHat REALLY annoys me with OSX is that .psd (photoshop) files default to Picture Viewer... and I've changed it, and it works now, but still... why not pick up the NATIVE app?
:cry:

[Lammy]

Originally Posted by cari

WHat REALLY annoys me with OSX is that .psd (photoshop) files default to Picture Viewer... and I've changed it, and it works now. . . .

How'd you change it?

[talentless]

How'd you change it?

Presumably . . .

- Select a Photoshop file in the Finder (one with a Picture Viewer icon).
- Do a "Get info" on it.
- Access the "Open with" section.
- Select Photoshop.
- Select "Change all".

Easy -- even I can do it! :wink:

[cari]

spot on!

;-)

[Lammy]

Thnaks!

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by cari

I didn't think OS X required file extensions, but have changed to using them as it improves the portability across different platforms.

Actually, OS X does use file extensions. You can make it so you don't see them by default (Finder Preferences>Always Show File Extensions), but if you hide them, you could have 2 files with the same name but in different formats and not be able to tell which is which without looking in the "Kind" column of a finder window ("FileName.psd" and "FileName.tif" would just show up as 2 occurences of "FileName".)

I prefer to show the extensions - much easier for me to see at a glance what kind of file I'm dealing with.

[Renae]

So how are you handling incoming files without extensions? We just switched from OS 9 to OS 10.3 this week. Very few of our stored or customer provided jobs have extensions on them.

We are also switching our servers. When I was in OS 9 I could copy the jobs from our old server (a RAID--Unix based I think) to our new server (a Dell Powervault 725N with Windows 2000), and delete from the RAID with very litle problems. In OS 10.3 I'm having a lot of problems with files not copying over. I get an error message saying it can't copy it because the file already exists. When I trash other files it says it can't trash it because it can't find it, even though I can still see the file on my computer. (We had these problems copying files to the Dell from a PC, too.) When I tried to make aliases of folders in OS 10.3 I got an error message saying it couldn't be completed because of an unexpected error code -37. I can go back to my old Mac and make the alias without any problems. Is this related to 10.3 using extensions? Any ideas of how to make this switch easier?

Thanks!

Renae

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by Renae

So how are you handling incoming files without extensions?

We aren't having to do anything at all to incoming files. I'm running Jaguar, so I can't say if it is any different under Panther. According to "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual" (great book, by the way), OS X tries to identify file types first by looking for type & creator codes (as in OS 9). If they are absent (as with most Cocoa application-created files) the file name suffixes kick in.

Can't help you with all your copying problems - I'm not a network guy at all. All I know is that we haven't had those issues (sorry!)