A .tif file or a .tiff file unexpectedly opens in Microsoft Office Document Imaging

When you double-click a .tif file or a .tiff file, the file unexpectedly opens in Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

For example, in Microsoft Windows, .tif files or .tiff files are configured to open in Microsoft Paint. However, when you double-click a .tif file or a .tiff file, the file unexpectedly opens in Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

This behavior may occur after you perform one of the following actions:

• You install Microsoft Office 2003 or one of the Office 2003 programs.
• You reinstall or repair an Office 2003 installation or one of the Office 2003 programs.
• You install a hotfix or an update for Office 2003 or one of the Office 2003 programs.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To work around this behavior, change the file association to the program in which you want the .tif files or .tiff files to open.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open Windows Explorer. To do this, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Explorer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
3. Click the File Types tab.
4. Click the extension that you want to change. For example, click TIF or TIFF.
5. Click Change.
6. In the Open With dialog box, select the program in which you want the .tif files or .tiff files to open, and then click OK.
7. Click OK to close the Folder Options dialog box.
8. If the issue occurs again, save these settings in a .reg file. After these settings are saved in a .reg file, you can double-click the .reg file to quickly reapply the file associations for .tif files and for .tiff files.
   
   To save these settings in a .reg file, follow these steps:
   1. Start Registry Editor. To do this, click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
   2. Select one of the following registry subkeys:
      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.tif
      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.tiff
   3. Right-click the subkey, and then click Export.
   4. In the Export Registry File dialog box, type the file name and the location in which you want to save the .reg file, and then click Save.
      
      Note If you changed the file associations for .tif files and .tiff files, make sure that you export a .reg file for .tif files and for .tiff files.

Note If you are an administrator, you can deploy .reg files to users. For example, you can deploy .reg files as part of a startup script.