file extension

[ekurburski]

I have Band-in-a-Box installed on my computer.  Now all of the style files have been associated with BIAB.  how do I revert  them to .sty or does it even matter?

[SeaGtGruff]

They are still ".STY" files (unless they use one of the other file extensions for specific types of styles), so all that has happened is that when Band In A Box was installed it told Windows to use Band In A Box as the default program for opening those file types-- i.e., if you navigate to a folder in the File Explorer and double-click on a ".STY" file, Windows will automatically use Band In A Box to open the file. This does not prevent other software or hardware from accessing the ".STY" files; its only purpose is to ensure that if you double-click on a ".STY" file you won't get a message saying that Windows doesn't know how to open ".STY" files or whatever the exact wording is. (Windows obviously knows how to open a file regardless of its file extension; but after opening a file Windows needs to know what it's expected to do with the data inside the file-- execute it, display it in a text editor, display it in a graphics editor, stream it to a media player, etc.)

Normally when you're installing an application that can be used to open and work with specific types of files, the installation program will pause at one point to display a list of file extensions that the application uses, with a check box by each of those file extensions, and it will ask you to select which file extensions you'd like Windows to associate with the application-- i.e., if you double-click on a file that has a specific extension, do you want Windows to use the application as the default choice for opening that particular extension? It might be that when that screen popped up during the installation, you simply clicked to continue the installation process using whichever choices had been checked or unchecked by default. Or it might be that you had selected a type of installation (e.g., "standard" versus "advanced," or "typical" versus "custom") which skips over certain screens that tend to be confusing for many users, hence the installation program didn't bother you with the screen about the file extensions.

Regardless of what happened, you should be able to continue using ".STY" files as you've always done, except that now when you double-click on a ".STY" file Windows will launch the Band In A Box application and open up the ".STY" file in Band In A Box. If you want to use a different application instead, you can either right-click on the ".STY" file, select "Open with...," and choose which application you want to use, or you can just launch the application and then open the ".STY" file from within the application. When you select the "Open with..." option and are choosing which application you want to open the file with, you should also be able to tell Windows whether you want it to use that application by default, or just this one time, by checking or unchecking the box that says "Always use this application" or whatever the exact wording is.