How to find portable application name?

[MBaas]

I would like to create a PFA for PDF-Files which would provide a link to open them with Trackers PDF-XChange Viewer.
But how can I find an application-name that XY would find?

I tried entering "PDF" in Cortana (to find out what the system "knows" about PDF) and it brought up "PDF-Viewer" which, when clicked on, opens the app. So I tried to setup the corresponding PFA as "pdf> PDF-Viewer" (with and without quotes), but I then get the error "Failed to open: PDF-Viewer". So, I looked at the application-names in "Add or remove programs" where it is shown as "PDF-XChange 4 Pro", but that didn't work either. I've also seen the "Browse"-Button in "Customize File-Associations", but the viewer wasn't shown there at all.

[admin]

Try just the base name of the PDF-XChange Viewer EXE:

Code: Select all

pdf>PDFXCview

[MBaas]

Nope, doesn't do it. (Not included in %PATH%)

It's strange, because according to the menu, it seems to have found it (shows correct icon AND correct path):

2016-03-01_13-04-59.png

The first link is the current experiment, the 2nd (which works) has fully qualified pathname of the .exe: "pdf >C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF Viewer\PDFXCview.exe"

[highend]

Show the complete line in PFA for that entry (because when I see the screenshot I doubt that you entered everything correct)

[MBaas]

2016-03-01_13-58-58.png

[admin]

Nope, doesn't do it. (Not included in %PATH%)

Indeed! But it will work in the next version.

[highend]

Remove the checkmark for the first entry. What happens when you doubleclick on a .pdf file afterwards?

[MBaas]

Yup, that opens the file. But it disables this PFA...

[highend]

Mh, what am I missing here? If the second pfa entry works correctly, why should you need any of the other three?

[MBaas]

The 2nd one is not "portable", it has the full path. And that matters, because I use the same configs on other machines...
And the other 2 launch different apps, as you mave have seen - there are purposes for that ;-)

[highend]

If the applications by itself are not used as portable versions but are installed on each machine it wouldn't matter at all (the installer puts them in %programfiles% regardless if it's a x64 or x86 bit OS and presuming the default directory is used...). Additionally I don't see the need for PFA definitions when you can use the normal context menu "open with" that list the (again) installed (and registered) applications if you need to start different ones depending only on what's currently needed (viewer, editor, ...).

But that's just me.

It probably won't take long until the next beta comes out and Don already said that the registered application name should work with that release so I'd just wait for the next beta

[MBaas]

Yepp, I'm looking forward to that release. The reason is very simple: although the "open"-verb correctly points to the XChange-Viewer, from time to time Egde manages to steal that association and opens the PDFs. And I'm happy if I can settle with one method that opens PDFs the same way on all machines, no matter who might just have hijacked the link ;-)

[MBaas]

Thanks Don - .06 beautifully fixed my problem! ;-)