In tip 2300 » Office documents open in Internet Explorer instead of the office application, we manually configured the registry.

I have scripted OpenInOwnApp.bat to configure the registry for the office file extensions you specify.

The syntax for using OpenInOwnApp.bat is:

OpenInOwnApp .EXT1 \[.EXT2 .. .EXTn\]

Where each .EXTX is an office file extension, like .DOC and .XLS, etc..

NOTE: OpenInOwnApp.bat uses REG.EXE, built into Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and later, or installed from the Support Tools on the Windows 2000 CD-ROM.

OpenInOwnApp.bat contains:

@echo off
setlocal
if \{%1\}
\{\} goto err
:loop
if \{%1\}
\{\} goto finish
set ext=%1
shift
set key="NONE"
call :getext>nul 2>&1
if %key% EQU "NONE" goto err
set /a BrowserFlags=0
call :getbf>nul 2>&1
set /a work=%BrowserFlags% ^& 8
if %work% EQU 8 goto loop
set /a BrowserFlags=%BrowserFlags% + 8
call :upd>nul 2>&1
goto loop
:getext
for /f "Tokens=3*" %%a in ('REG QUERY "HKCR\%ext%" /VE^|find "REG_SZ"') do (
 set key="HKCR\%%b"
)
goto :EOF
:getbf
for /f "Tokens=3" %%a in ('REG QUERY %key% /V BrowserFlags^|find "REG_DWORD"') do (
 set /a BrowserFlags=%%a
)
goto :EOF
:upd
REG ADD %key% /V BrowserFlags /T REG_DWORD /F /D %BrowserFlags%
goto :EOF
:err
@echo Syntax: OpenInOwnApp .EXT1 \[.EXT2 .. .EXTn\]
goto :loop
:finish
endlocal