Trouble installing downloads (attempts to open with word or excel)

[Hadley]

I just got my first mac recently, a 15" mbp with the 2gb ram and 120 gb hard drive. I got it mainly for school, doing photo and video editing (and my school is completely mac driven, its nice to be running on the same system at home).

I love the mbp so far, aside from one thing. A majority of programs I have attempted to download have been giving me trouble when I try to open them to install. One thing I have wanted to do is download winamp or windows media player for mac, because half of my 40 gb of music is in wma format. Every time I attempt to open the downloaded files, they open in word or excel, which is obviously no help to me.

Things I have tried already include downloading stuffit expander, which just didnt do anything. I read on feedback forums that the newest downloadable version of this sucks, and I have gotten nowhere with it. I tried opening the files with stuffit and nothing happens.

as far as the wma music files, I downloaded file wrangler to attempt and change them to mp3 format, but that didnt seem to work either. I have flip4mac, but its annoying because quicktime doesnt allow playlists to be formed, and I dont feel like continually opening the next song on an album after each song is finished playing.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, and Ive already learned a lot about my mac just by running through a few pages of these forums.

 

[mkrishnan]

Okay, I think you're doing some fairly obvious-in-hindsight things wrong....

First:

You have to get to know Apple download file extensions:

1) DMG -- these are disk images. You do not need any special software to install them. BUT you must use them correctly. When you double click them, a window with the app appears. Unless the app is just an installer file, DO NOT run it from this location. Instead, drag the app to the Applications folder, and then drag the icon for the disk image that's on the desktop to the trash can. Then run the app from the apps folder.

2) StuffIt files -- whoever told you that StuffIt is problematic... it's not great software, and you should avoid it in favor of disk images whenever possible, but there's nothing wrong with Stuffit Expander. If memory serves me, the expander itself comes as a DMG file. So see (1) above for how to install it, and install it before you try to use it. Typically when a stuffit file is opened, you get a folder with the application or an installer in it. If it's an installer, just run it from there. If it's the application itself, drag it to the apps folder.

3) ZIP files -- again, do not need any special software. Double click the ZIP, from here it's just like (2) -- you get a folder typically, etc.

So slow down a step, get StuffIt installed correctly, and then proceed. You can do it.

* Installer files typically look either like a disc icon or like a cardboard box being opened up.

 

[mkrishnan]

P.S. This guide has substantially more detailed instructions.

 

[Hadley]

Im stupid and forgot to mention that the files i was having trouble with were bin files. I havent had trouble with dmg or zip, and I will try and reinstall the suffit expander to see how that works. thanks

 

[mkrishnan]

Bin files open with StuffIt Expander also. Good luck!

 

[Hadley]

I dont know what happened, but I reinstalled stuffit and it worked perfectly, thanks for the help!