Power Mode and Enter Key File Open Problem

Help & Support
1

I have noticed when using the Power Mode with the option "Enter key opens all selected files", that it will not always open all of the files. I have a directory with several WRI files in it. I select say about 15 and then press enter. When I do this I might get 7 or 8 to open. Funny things is each time I try it I might get a different number opened but never all of them. These files are each about 15meg in size. Of course if I try this with small text files it is not a problem. I have a very high end system with 2 gig of ram so I do not think the hardware resources are the problem. This almost seems like a memory timing issue. Has any one else seen this?

Thanks,
Chuck

2

Sounds like whatever handles the .WRI files on your computer doesn't always deal with multiple open requests at once.

Does the same thing happen in Explorer?

3

nudel, this was indeed a good question you asked. Sure enough, I get the same results with Windows Explorer. Not for sure why this would be. Do you have any ideas?

4

It will be due to the program handling the .WRI files and/or the its has created the Open action in the .WRI filetype.

Which program is it?

What command does the filetype's Open action run?

5

The program is simply Wordpad that somes with Windows XP.

6

WordPad doesn't have a DDE interface and can't open files via drag & drop either (it attaches them to the current document instead) so it looks like the only solution, apart from notusing WordPad, would be to create an intermediate script or program that the files are sent to, which then launches WordPad for each file with a delay between each one.

Not a great solution, though, since you either have to guess what the right delay is (which won't always be right, e.g. if the computer is running slowly one day) or work out some way to tell when WordPad has become ready for the next file...

I haven't tried any of them, but this NeoWin thread has some recommended free WordPad alternatives which might work better. (It also has some Notepad alternatives recommended by mistake but ignore those. :slight_smile:)