Parallels 5 messes with file type associations

I have Parallels Desktop 5 installed. And what happens all the time is that certain file extensions get registered on the Mac side to be opened with some Windows app. E.g. I have Office Mac 2008 and I want .doc files (from the Mac file system or a mail attachment) to open on the Mac. I can set this for all files. But on a regular basis and without having run Parallels, the .doc gets reassigned to open in Parallels (Win XP guest OS) to open with IE or Wordpad or something. There is no MS Office on my Win Gues OS.

Now, to fix this I have to drag a file from mail to desktop, change the association fo all files of this type via the info panel. But then, a while later, the association somehow reverts to the Windows Guest OS.

This is very frustrating, how can I keep my system from changing this association to Parallels all the time?

 

Go to the VM configuration, tab "Options", section "Shared applications", and uncheck all tickboxes. Hope that helps.

 

But it is still a bug

I already did that in the past and it does not stick.

But still, I consider it a Parallels bug if I explicitely tell Mac OS X to associate .doc with Word.app and without any action from me the association on Mac OS X is changed from Word.app to some .exe under Parallels. Parallels should leave my choices on the Mac OS X side alone. Only I should be able to set associations from some .app to some .exe on the OS X side.

The same happens the other way around. When in my VM, an .ica (Citrix) file is suddenly opened by the Mac Citrix client. But I want an .ica file on the VM side opened in the VM and on the Host OS side on the Host OS. And though I want that for .ica, I might nog want that for some other extension.

The only option I now seem to have is to separate them completely, and that really is not as nice as it could be.