Specifying Applications for Documents

In this lesson for in macOS Mojave for the Mac, I look at how to open a file using a specific application, such as opening a Microsoft Word document in Pages or a Microsoft Excel document in Numbers. I also show you how to set a document’s default app that it will always open in.

Opening a Document in a Specific Application
To open a document in a specific application, you select the document, then you go up to the Menu Bar, and under File, you will see ‘Open With’. When you choose this, you will see a list of applications you can use to open your selected document.

You can also use the secondary menu to select an app to open your document with, again, select ‘Open With’ in the secondary menu (control-click pulls up the secondary menu).

Setting a Document to always open in a Specific Application
If you want a document to always open in a specific application, you select the document, then under File in the Menu Bar, select ‘Get Info’. A window will open, and one of the options is Open with:. Under this option will be a dropdown menu, just select the application you always want your document to open in.

Setting a Document Type to always open in a Specific Application
You can also set a specific document type to open in a specific application. You’ll use this technique if you want all your Excel documents to open in Numbers or all your Word documents to open in Pages. To do this, select a document that you want to change what it opens with, then go under File in the Menu Bar and select ‘Get Info’. In the window that opens up, you will see Open with:, choose the app you want the document to open with and then click on Change All. This will change all of your documents of that type to open with the application you selected.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.