Opening from the Windows desktop on Windows 7 or earlier (CC)

In this movie, I'll show you how to open a document inside Illustrator by double clicking on it at the Windows desktop. Now, obviously this is not a hard thing to master. We all know how to double click. But the trick is making sure that your documents are associated with Illustrator, so they don't open in a wrong program. If you're working on the Mac, by the way, go ahead and skip ahead to the next movie in which I show you how to do the same thing from the Macintosh Finder. Now, notice I'm looking at the contents of my Exercise Files folder which are available to those of you who are premium members.

And there's this subfolder called 01_make_doc. It contains three files, all of which apear to be called Welcome. They're actually Welcome.ai, Welcome.eps, and Welcome.svg. The problem is, that extensions are hidden by default. So what you want to do, to bring those extensions back, is tap the Alt key. In order to bring up the old style menu bar then click on tools and choose folder options. Then inside the folder options dialogue box switch to the view tab and notice down here this check box, hide extensions for known file types, go ahead and turn that off And then click OK, and now you'll be able to see those extensions.

Now, this first one, Welcome.ai, that ai stands for Adobe Illustrator, so that's Illustrator's native file format, meaning that it's a safe bet that if you double-click on that file It's going to open inside Illustrator automatically, as it's doing for me. Now, notice if you end up seeing this reduced version of the program, you can go ahead and click on the Maximize button in the upper right corner of the screen, in order to fill the screen with this document. However, I'm going to go ahead and minimize Illustrator. So that I can try out the next document here, welcome.eps.

EPS stands for encapsulated post script. And the idea is that EPS allows you to share your vector based graphics with other programs, with print programs specifically. I'll go ahead and double-click on that file. And in my case it once again opens inside Illustrator. Now that may or may not happen for you. Chances are good it will, but if not, here's how you solve the problem. I'll go ahead and minimize Illustrator again, because notice this final file Welcome.svg, that stands for scalable effector graphics. And that's a format for sharing your vector based artwork on the web. When I double click on this file, it ends up opening inside Internet Explorer. Which is great, because it looks beautiful and everything. However, the problem is if I want to edit this document inside Illustrator then I need to open it inside Illustrator.

So I'll go ahead and close Internet Explorer. If you want the file to open in Illustrator from now on, then you right click on it, choose Open With and then select this command, Choose Default Program. Now you should see the most recent version of Illustrator listed up here with the recommended programs. If you don't, then click on this little down pointing arrowhead to reveal a list of additional programs. Then you should be able to find it there. If you still can't find Illustrator, you'll need to click on the Browse button and locate the program manually.

But in my case, it's conveniently located right here at the top. Next, you want to make sure that this checkbox, always use the selected program to open this kind of file Is turned on, and then click OK. And now, Windows goes ahead and opens the SVG file inside of Illustrator, as you can see here, and if I minimize the program, you'll note that the icon has updated as well to indicate That SVG files from now on will open inside Adobe Illustrator. And that, friends, is how you open the primary three file formats: AI, EPS, and SVG, inside of Illustrator, just by double-clicking on the files from the Windows desktop.