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I’m getting the message “This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the folders options control panel.” when I attempt to open a PPS/PPT attachment in Outlook Express. What’s that all mean, and what do I do?

Well, in short it means that Outlook Express doesn’t know what to do with the attached file. It tries to figure that out based on the file “extension” or the characters that follow the last period in the file name; the “pps” or “ppt” file.

The simplest thing to do is usually to reinstall the application that you expect to handle this type of file. For a PPS file you might reinstall the PowerPoint Viewer, or perhaps Microsoft Office, which contains PowerPoint. Office also offers what’s called a “repair” install. One or the other should remedy the situation in most cases.

But reinstalling software isn’t always practical. Let’s face it, reinstalling Office could take some time. So we can fix things by hand.

Warning: this gets a little geeky.

We’ll start with Windows Explorer:
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Open up Windows Explorer. (The Windows Key + E, on many keyboards.)
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Find any file with the PPS extension. For example somefile.pps.
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Right-click on the filename, and select Open With ….
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Even if the PowerPoint or PowerPoint Viewer is already listed don’t click on it. Instead, select Choose Program at the bottom of the list that’s displayed.
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In the resulting dialog box you should find PowerPoint, or PowerPoint Viewer, and click on that.
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Click the box labeled “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file”.
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Press OK

This made your selection permanent. PPS files will now be opened with the program you’ve selected.

This may be enough. See if it resolves your problem. If not, we have an additional place to make a similar modification. But this one’s even geekier.

First, you’ll need to locate “powerpnt.exe” (PowerPoint), or “pptveiw.exe” (PowerPoint Viewer) on your hard disk. This varies based on the version you may have. For Office 2003, with a default install, I found them at:
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“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE”
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“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\PowerPoint Viewer\PPTVIEW.EXE”

The quotes are important because there’s a space in the file name. The capitalization actually doesn’t matter. Remember which one you have, we’ll need it in a second.

Now we go, as the error message suggested, to Control Panel:
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In Control Panel, double click on Folder Options.
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Click on the File Types tab.
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In the Registered File Types list, scroll down until you find the PPS entry and click on that. It should, at this point, tell you in the Details section that it “opens with: ” PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer.
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Click on the Advanced button.
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For a PowerPoint file, one of the Actions listed should be Show.
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If  “Show” exists, click on it, click on Set Default, and click on Edit….
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In the Application used to perform action: enter the full path to either PowerPoint, or PowerPoint Viewer that you found above, or use the browse button to find them again. Don’t hit OK just yet.
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For Powerpoint, after that full path name add a space followed by: /s “%1”. For PowerPoint Viewer, do the same, only without the /s.
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OK your way back out.
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If “Show” didn’t exist, click the New button, type Show in the Action field, and in the Application used to perform action field, enter the full path to either PowerPoint, or PowerPoint Viewer that you found above, or use the browse button to find them again. Don’t hit OK just yet.
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For Powerpoint, after that full path name add a space followed by: /s “%1”. For PowerPoint Viewer, do the same, only without the /s.
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Hit OK, click on Show in the Actions list, and then click on Set Default.
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OK your way back out.

WHEW! I told you it would be geeky. You may need to shut down and restart the application you were running, perhaps Outlook Express, when you first had the problem.

24-Oct-2008 Update: a number of people are coming here with this same problem relating to “.exe” files. In this case things are much more complex, since “.exe” files conceptually aren’t run by another program, the are the program.

Rather than detail it here, I’ve located this with complete steps to resolve the issue: Broken EXE Association.