Participant

Question

Help me please

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
November 2, 2025
3 replies
172 views

Good afternoon hive mind,

Have posted before but haven't found a solution.

I have Photoshop 2026 installed on my laptop. The program runs fine and I can open all file types.

HOWEVER .... I cannot open Photoshop by selecting any files. And if I try the 'Open With' option, Photoshop does not show up as normal. In the list of available option there is a Photoshop.exe but clicking on it does nothing. If I try and set Photoshop as the default program to open picture files it does not show up.

If I click on installed apps ... it's there.

Am really confused and if someone can help I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks

Colin

Windows

D Fosse

Community Expert

@colinw39480121 This is broken file associations. That can happen if an older version is uninstalled with a new version in place. The old version takes file associations with it on the way out. Yes, this is a problem in the CC installer which I've pointed out for many years.

Normally a reinstall will clear this up and reinstate the correct associations, but sometimes it stays stuck. In that case you may need to run the CC Cleaner tool.

The way to completely avoid this problem is to always follow strict version order both ways. When uninstalling, start with the newest and work backwards. Then reinstall the one you want.

C

colinw39480121Author

Participant

Hi there,

Thanks for that. Tried it ( multiple times ) and exactly the same thing. No problem opening Photoshop and opening files from photoshop but not the other way around. Tearing my hair out .... Don't know what else to do.

Thanks for your help though

C

Claire H.

Community Manager

Hi @colinw39480121, welcome to the Photoshop Community forum! To better help you with this issue, we would like a few more details. Can you send your system info? You can find your system info by going to Help > System Info, copying and pasting it into a text file, and attaching it here.

In the meantime, let's try to reset Windows file associations. Go to Settings → Apps → Default Apps → Reset all defaults → restart your computer.
After rebooting, try setting .PSD or .JPG back to Photoshop. If this doesn't resolve the issue, we will continue to troubleshoot it. Thanks! ^CH

C

colinw39480121Author

Participant

Hi Ged,

Thanks for that. Tried but same same. All my other CC apps work as normal. Don't know what I am missing. Guessing it must be some sort of issue with linking a file to PS. But as mentioned, I have no problem opening files from within PS.

Ged_Traynor

Community Expert

@colinw39480121 I would try uninstalling Photoshop from the Creative Cloud and selecting to remove the preferences and then reinstall

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