AboutNeal Ziring Expertise Experienced user of versions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and X3 mostly for
web page graphics, some photo retouching, some technical document
illustration. Right now I only have versions 12 and X3 available to me,
so I'll be best at answering questions about those.
Question I use Corel Photo Paint 11 in Windows XP. I've recently re-installed XP and all my other apps. Now in the old install, I could click on a file in Windows explorer, and all of them would open in the same instance of Photo Paint. In the re-install, every time I click on an image in windows explorer, Corel Photo Paint opens a new instance of the application. So instead of having three images open in Paint; I get three instances of Paint open, each with a single image. I assume it's a registry setting, but where? Thanks for your consideration.
Answer Bernie,
Well, I could not find anything like this referenced in the
Corel forums or anything. I understand the problem, the Open
command is simply starting up PhotoPaint, without using DDE.
Unfortunately, forcing it to use DDE is not always simple.
I can think of a two main possibilities for fixing it.
Method 1 - PhotoPaint Options
Open the PhotoPaint Options dialog (Tools->Options, I think).
Under "Global", you should see an item labeled "Filters", and
under that an item labeled "Associate". Select Associate, and
you'll see a long list of graphics file types. Uncheck all
of them, then click OK. Then open the Options dialog again,
and go back to Associate. Check the boxes for the file types
you like to edit in PhotoPaint (probably CPT, TIF, JP2, etc...)
Then click OK again. Exit PhotoPaint and try opening images
from Explorer. It should work now.
Scroll down the list of file types until you find one that is
bound to Corel PhotoPaint. Click on the "Advanced" button,
and a dialog will pop up. (If advanced is not there, click on
Restore and it magically change into Advanced. %*&$#! Windows!)
In the dialog, select "Open" from the command list and
click the Edit.. button. Make sure the checkbox "DDE" is
checked, and that the following values appear in the fields
below it:
DDE message: [open("%1")]
Application: CORELPP
Topic: System
Then click on OK, and OK.
If it works, do the same thing for all the file types you want
to edit with PhotoPaint.
If neither of those two work, then you'd have to edit the registry
directly. I know how to do that, but it is way too dangerous and
complicated to explain here.
