Changing Terminal Server/Citrix User's File Extensions

I recently had an issue where users on a terminal services session (Citrix) could not change their own file extensions. They could "open with" but like typical end users - this is too much work. I set out to find a way to set this in a more reliable fashion. Of course, if you "open with" you often get the "always use the selected program to open this kind of file" but for whatever reason this sometimes doesn't work. Below are instructions for setting the file association on a per user basis, manually. To do this on a per server basis, see the Microsoft instructions on how to accomplish this.

Procedure for changing someone’s file association in Terminal Server:

Most info is here: http://www.brianmadden.com/content/article/Creating-Custom-File-Associations-to-Support-Side-by-Side-Applications
1. Run “ftype > c:\ftype_output.txt”
2. Look in c:\ftype_output.txt for your program, and make note of the associated name, e.g. Word.Document.8
3. Log in as the end-user, and launch regedit.exe
4. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes
5. Create a new Key under Classes. Name it whatever your extension is e.g. “.txt”







6. Edit the “(Default)” REG_SZ value under the newly created key and put in the associated name you noted in step 2. In this case it is Word.Document.8









7. You should be able to test the new functionality immediately. No logoff/logon needed. In my example, files with the .txt extension open with Microsoft Word 2003.