OS X Leopard / VMWare : Turn on and off opening of files in virtual machines (ie .doc in office for windows)
This recipe will explain how to enable / prevent VMWare Fusion from opening documents when in the Mac OS / Finder (ie not running in a virtual session). For example, I have Windows XP running in VMWare Fusion and in turn installed Office 2007 and also shared my User folder in XP. After doing this, I noticed that when i tried to open a .doc or .txt; VMWare Fusion would start my XP Machine and open it in Word 2007 (cool at first but annoying since i had iWork installed and preferred using Pages). For others though this might be nice integration. Here’s how to enable/disable this feature.
Open VMWare Fusion.
Go to Virtual Machine > Shared Folders > Open Shared Folders Settings

Once in here, just check / uncheck the ” Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine” to your liking.

Voila!





Mark said on April 2, 2009
Have you tried mounting the Windows disk in Finder with VMDK mount utility?
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/169059
Chris Shevlin said on May 29, 2009
When I double-click a Word document in Finder I’d like it to open in Word 2007 on my virtual machine rather than Word 2008 on my Mac. Can you tell me how I can make that happen? Thanks very much. Chris
Anonymous said on July 21, 2009
Problem just started (don’t know how), but this solved my problem. Thanks
Tanner said on March 11, 2011
These options are not available for my VMWare 3 preferences. (VMWare Fusion 3.1.2)