Functional "Open With" from Explorer

[mikpal]

If you have mulitple versions of LabVIEW installed, some of them show up in the "Open With" menu, but regardless of which item you select, the VI will always open in whichever version of LabVIEW was opened most recently.

Example: if I opened a legacy VI in LabVIEW 2009, closed that version of LabVIEW completely, and opened another VI using the "Open with" menu and selected LabVIEW 12..., LabVIEW 2009 is relaunched and is unable to open the VI because it should have launched in LabVIEW 2012.

The current workaround is to add all installed versions as options in the "Send to" menu, but this is not nearly as intuitive as using "Open with" would be.

[crossrulz]

For those who don't know, here's Darren's Nugget on how to put each LabVIEW version in your Send To menu: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Darren-s-Weekly-Nugget-09-21-2009/m-p/988273

[Sam_Sharp]

I actually created my own application to do this. When installed (to create the registry keys), it will attempt to open a VI with the appropriate version of LabVIEW for the file being opened. If you don't have the correct version installed - it'll offer a drop-down to select which version of LabVIEW you want to open it with.

The main problem with it is that if you make it the default program to open LV files with, it will replace the icons with a generic VI icon rather than the nice, type specific icons. It also uses the NI System Configuration VIs to get the LV versions installed which means it might take a few seconds to do the lookup.

Screenshot:

(I only have LV 2012 installed at the moment)

[Eric_BOB]

Hi

Do you know this tool  http://lavag.org/topic/12241-labview-shell-launcher/

Regards

Eric

[Hooovahh]

Little late but I also have a utility that does this called the LabVIEW Tray Launcher.

It shows you what versions of LabVIEW are open, and what ones can open the VI.  It has several other features too like task killing, or restarting LabVIEW, and aborting all VIs in all versions.  Not perfect but the source is available.  Also LAVA discussion.  Still I voted for this idea.