Many users didn't understand how this feature worked or what happened to attachments when they were opened. I suspect most of the data loss came from user error, not Outlook reliability. txt document and sendto Excel, that way no defaults are changed and there are no mixups down the road.This 'feature' (or design flaw, according to some administrators) was removed because of 'reliability issues and data loss problems' with replacing an attachment received from someone with a version that you edited. If you are trying to, say, open a comma delimited database that is in a text file with Excel, you could always put a link to Excel in the SendTo right click menu so that all you would need to do is right click on your. There has been a program to do that for you since, I believe, Windows 95. One need not mess with the registry in order to accomplish what you want. If you can't find it in the start menu, such as in Windows 10, you can find it in Settings or, as with earlier versions, in the Control Panel. In Windows 7 one need only click on the Start button and chose 'Default Programs' from the menu on the right to be able to tell Windows which program opens which file type by default. I am going to assume you are using Windows, so this is a generalized way of going about accomplishing what you're asking and goes for any file type you want to assign to an application. However, to answer your question, it depends on your operating system and even the version of it. I have to agree with stables2511 in asking why you would want to do this? The problem with formatted word processors such as Word, and with Excel as well, is that there is so much formatting going on in the background that it is possible to introduce what are known as 'control characters', invisible alpha-numeric characters that are meant to serve any number of purposes, that can, in turn, introduce errors into whatever you're working with.

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