How to Open a File Missing the Icon.

If you download a file to a Macintosh, or copy a file to a Macintosh from a PC, sometimes you lose the information telling your computer which application to use with the file. This often happens when you download a file associated with an application (such as Mathematica) which your browser does not recognize. In this situation, the icon for the file does not appear with the correct "picture," namely . If you double-click the icon, the computer does not automatically find the correct application to use.

You can still use the file. To do so, do one of the following:

1. Drag the icon for the file onto an icon for the application associated with the file. The application should open, and the file should load. (I've only run into a few instances when this did not work.)
   
   
2. Choose the correct application to use from a list the computer provides when you double-click the icon, provided that application is in the list (and it gives you such a list).

   or

3. Start the application which should be associated with the file, and then open the file using the File…Open (or equivalent) menu item. (This should always work provided you are using the correct application.)

If you then save the file from the application, you should get the correct icon (possibly after a screen refresh) and be able to open it later by double-clicking.

The same problem can occur on a Windows computer if the file you download or copy is not named with the correct file extension (e.g. ".nb" for Mathematica notebooks, ".doc" for Word documents). In this case, you usually get a generic Windows icon instead of the icon normally associated with the application. You can usually correct this on Windows machines by renaming the file with the proper file extension (e.g. filename.doc for a Word file). If you rename the file, make sure there are no periods in the filename other than the one before the file extension. If this does not work, you can use one of the three methods above.

Finally, occasionally when you receive a Mathematica notebook by download or by email, when you open it you do not see it in "notebook form." Instead, you get a window containing something like "Mathematica-Compatible Notebook." You can often fix this by copying and pasting the contents of that window into a new blank notebook within Mathematica.

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This page maintained by Steven Amgott.

Last updated November 7, 2000.