I frequently switch between OSX and OS9. I have installed both Office98 (OS9) and OfficeX (OSX). But they seem to be conflicting with each other. Specifically, when I'm in OS9 and I double click on a Word document (for example) I get a dialog box stating that I can not run Office in an OS earlier than 10.1... it's apparently trying to open OfficeX. A workaround is simple, if I manually start Word98 then I can double click on all my Word files and they open just fine. But this is a minor pain. Is there a way I can have OfficeX be the app that runs when I double click a file in OSX AND Office98 be the app that runs when I double click in OS9? What secret installation trick do I need to get this to happen? Thanks Mike

There isn't any way to do what you want, but a reasonably simple workaround is to put an alias to each app on your desktop and just drop files on the alias when you want to open them. p

Thanks P! Can you give a simple explanation why? One thing I've heard from friends is that there's only one metadata file and that points to THE app to run, regardless of OS9 vs OSX. However, same friends state that OSX FIRST relies on the Windows method of using ".doc" and ".xls", etc to decide how to open the files. If this is the case, I'd be quite happy making the metadata file point to Office98 while the ".doc" or ".xls" is used while in OSX/OfficeX. Thanks Mike

Adding the extension likely won't help matters at all, and OS X handles metadata very poorly. The first explanation you've heard is the main reason why it won't work; OS X doesn't handle file extensions the same way Windoze does, so that's why I doubt adding extensions will work well. You oughta finish the migration to OS X so this isn't an issue ;) p