How does it know??

[clareq]

Yesterday I was asked if the data manager could have the default program for xml files changed to excel, as she has a lot of xml SIMS templates that are best opened in Excel. No problem, I created a targeted GPP and set the association for her. She then asked if another member of staff could have the same setting. I explained that as this member of staff deals with pupil reports, which are also exported from SIMS as a xml, it would be a bad idea, as those reports would also try and open in Excel.

No, she replied - look. She then proceeded to click on a student report.xml, which opened in Word, and a template.xml, which opened in Excel. How does the computer know???

[Steve21]

Do you mean when run via SIMs or a local file? If it's one run via SIMs you pick the program as part of the report.

 

Steve

[Mark182]

Have a look here we had the same.

[clareq]

I opened her My SIMS documents, so we were running a local file.

[jthompson]

I think what you need to do is associate XML files not with Excel or Word, but with the separate Office XML Handler utility (MSOXMLED.EXE). Whether it's ultimately Word or Excel or whatever that's needed is in one of the XML tags in the document.

 

For Office 2010, we've used Group Policy to associate XML files to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE14\MSOXMLED.EXE /verb open "%1"