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Ask DLS: Do drag-and-drop associations work on your Windows 7?

by Lee Mathews on February 10, 2009 at 04:00 PM

WinSuperSite was talking about an interesting feature in Windows 7 the other day. Apparently you can drag files to an application pinned to your taskbar to associate it with that program. At least, that's what some other users have said.

I gave it a try, and met with no success.

I tried with PNG and JPEG images, but dragging them to FastStone MaxView didn't do anything - the file just scooted to the side and pinned itself to the taskbar. I tried ISO files and ImgBurn. Same result. I tried ZIP files and 7-Zip. No dice.

If you're running Windows 7, does it work for you? If it's limited to certain applications, I'm not convinced how useful a feature it is. If I'm missing something, please tell me.

And one further question: with so many people running the beta, is it time for Microsoft to publicize a detailed list of features like this in Windows 7, or is it better for testers to keep stumbling onto them on our own?

Tags: askdls, osupdates

Comments

LethALFeb 10th 2009 4:17PM

Neutral

Not really, although the recent files list works fine. I tried dragging an mp3 (associated with foobar), and it wanted to pin it to WMP. The same with .txt, notepad and notepad++.

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OwenFeb 10th 2009 5:22PM

Neutral

In Vista you can right-drag a file onto a program's quick launch icon to open the file with that program. I would expect the same is true in 7. It also provides a context-menu when you do so, so I suppose there is room for a new option to associate the dragged file type to that program.

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mkoFeb 11th 2009 10:14PM

Neutral

Actually You can do that in XP too

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El TacoFeb 10th 2009 6:18PM

Neutral

Not working for me. When I try dragging a .txt file to mmicrosoft word, it just wants to pin notepad++ to the start menu and pin the .txt file to that.

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superrrguyFeb 11th 2009 1:33AM

Neutral

I wish u could drop a file on an icon on the taskbar top open it. Instead it tries to pin it or moves icons and tries to squeeze in a new one.

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JasonFeb 11th 2009 7:28AM

Neutral

The pinning action on Win7 only works if the file you are dragging has been associated with the application in question.

Here is a real world example:
I use notepad on a daily basis, but for advanced edits I use Notepad++. If I try to open a .txt file, notepad would be the default application. If I right click and choose open with, and then selected Notepad++ (I decided to not make Notepad++ the default, so I untick the Make default action option) I can now right click any .txt file and choose Notepad++ under the open with dialog. After dong this, the taskbar icon for the app will let me pin the file to either program on the taskbar.

This long story is to say that if the file type is not associated with the program, the taskbar won't let you pin the file to the program.

Personally I can come up with 100 scenarios where this behavior is NOT ideal, but it is the default behavior in the Win7 beta.

Bugs have been filed...

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T3chnic133Feb 11th 2009 11:01AM

Neutral

I haven't had a chance to install windows 7 yet on a spare machine but from the description of i'm thinking that they may have been talking about the quicklaunch icons.

This is actually a feature in XP and Vista if you want to open a file with a program that's on your quicklaunch you can drag and drop it on top of the program icon.

I'm also thinking that if the file doesn't have a default program association it will latch itself to the first program that can open it.

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VDFeb 11th 2009 1:17PM

Neutral

Indeed, it will only pin the file. Also it's not very consistent, it won't work (the same) for any file. For some (mp3, text) I could move the file anywhere on the taskbar and it will pin the file - although it is sometimes glitchy (big CPU spikes - I have a quad core). For image files it will only do pinning when I move the file on the icon. For video files it won't do pinning at all.

On the other hand, I find that changing the association when dropping the file on an app shortcut to be a silly idea. Sometimes I could drop a file by mistake on another application, and surely I wouldn't want to change the association because of a mistake. When considering that such a mistake could be easy to do, pinning the file instead of opening the app actually seems like a good idea.

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