In associating documents with applications, Finder® employs Launch Services. Launch Services uses several files to associate documents with applications and vice versa. If these files become corrupted, the following problems can occur:
This FAQ, derived from our Troubleshooting Mac® OS X series of books, provides the steps required to reset Launch Services. Be sure to read these instructions in their entirety, including the Notes, before proceeding.
There are two approaches to resetting Launch Services:
| 1. | Log in to the affected account. |
| 2. | Open Terminal, located in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities folder. |
| 3. | At the prompt, type the following command exactly as written: |
| find /System/Library/Frameworks -type f -name “lsregister” -exec {} -kill -seed -r \; | |
| 4. | Press Return. The Launch Services database is rebuilt; it is finished when the Terminal prompt returns. |
| 5. | End the Terminal session by doing one of the following:
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| 6. | Quit (Command-Q) Terminal. |
| 7. | Check to determine if the problem is resolved. |
| 1. | Quit all running applications. |
| 2. | Trash the following two files in the Macintosh HD > Library > Caches folder:
where nnn is the User ID number of the affected account. Type your Admin password if prompted to authenticate the deletion of these files. See Notes [1] and [2]. Note: If you upgraded from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, this folder may also contain files with file names:
where nnn represents the User ID numbers of accounts on the Mac. These files can also be deleted as they are leftovers from Tiger. |
| 3. | Restart your Mac. |
| 4. | Log in to the affected account. |
| 5. | If the problem is resolved, skip to step 6. Otherwise:
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| 6. | Empty the Trash. |
| 1. | Quit all running applications. |
| 2. | Trash the following two files in the Macintosh HD > Library > Caches folder:
where nnn is the uid (User ID) number, as listed in the NetInfo database, of the affected account. Type your Admin password if prompted to authenticate the deletion of these files. See Notes [1] and [2]. |
| 3. | Restart your Mac. |
| 4. | Log in to the affected account. |
| 5. | Empty the Trash. |
| 6. | Verify that the problem is solved. If not:
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[1] This step will result in you being prompted to approve the launch of the application associated with a given document the first time you double-click that document. These alerts are a result of the security feature in Mac OS X. The list of applications which you have previously approved are saved in the caches deleted in this step.
[2] The first user account defined on your Mac is generally User ID number 501, the second User ID number 502, and so forth. For example, the second file ID for the first account would be:
| Under Leopard: | com.apple.LaunchServices-023501.csstore | |
| Under Tiger: | com.apple.LaunchServices-014501.csstore |
Use the instructions in the following table to find the User ID number (Leopard) or uid number (Tiger) for any account:
| Mac OS X 10.5 or later: |
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| Mac OS X 10.4: |
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[3] This step will reset to default values all associations you have created between specific file types and applications. For example, if you set PDFs to open in Adobe® Acrobat® instead of Preview, they would now open in Preview again until the association of PDFs with Acrobat is reset.