If you are downloading Stock Studies from a website, or trading them by email, you may run into a case where the computer suddenly tries to use the wrong program to open the file. Most cases we see will involve the computer trying to open a Stock Study with Adobe Acrobat, Internet Explorer, Excel, Roxio, or sometimes even notepad.
Sometimes the file will open, but show up as a long list of numbers. Other times the file will not open at all, and you will encounter an error message. Some of the more common ones are:
This file could not be opened
This is not a supported file type
This file may be corrupt
The file may be damaged
Regardless of the case, the reason is the same: Windows keeps a list of what type of files can be opened by which programs, and sometimes that list gets changed with little to no notice.
The following steps show how to make an adjustment to that list so that the files will open in Toolkit again.
Click the Start button, and then select Control Panel.
In Windows 8 and Windows 10, Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard, and tap the letter X to get a menu that will let you select Control Panel.
With the Control Panel window open, type set associations in the Search box at the top right-hand corner of the window.
From the options that appear, click Make a file type always open in a specific program. This will show a list of all of the different files your computer has a listing for.
Scroll down until you find the listing for .ssg; most computers will have several hundred files listed here, so depending on the computer, it may take a minute to get down the list.
Once you find the entry for .ssg, click once to select it, then click the Change program button near the top right-hand corner of the window.
For Windows 8 and Windows 10, a dialog box may appear, asking How Do you want to open files from now on? If so, click More apps, or More Options, near the bottom of the window. Scroll all the way down the list of suggested programs, and click Look for another app on this PC. This will open a new window, similar to the one described in step 6.
For Windows Vista or 7, the Open With window will appear. Click Browse, and a new Open with… window will appear, showing folders on your computer.
By default, this window will show everything in Program Files on your computer. Look down the list of folders until you find ICLUBcentral, and then double-click to open it up.
If you do not see an ICLUBcentral folder, your computer may have a second Program Files folder. To check for this, look near the top of the Open with… window, and you will see something like this:
Click the small triangle or arrow to the left of Program Files, and you will see a list of primary folders on the computer. If you see one named Program Files (x86), click on that, and you will find the ICLUBcentral folder; double-click to open it up.
From the ICLUBcentral folder, double-click to open the Toolkit6 folder.
From the Toolkit6 folder, Click the Orange and Blue toolkit6 icon to select it.
Click Open, near the bottom right-hand corner of the window.
This will return you to the first Open With window, where Toolkit Version 6 will show up, and be selected. Click OK, and the Set Associations window will appear again. Windows 8 and Windows 10 usually skip this confirmation, and simply take you back to the Set Associations window directly.
At this point the listing for .ssg will now show up with a description, NAIC Stock Selection Guide Files, and the Current Default will be listed as Toolkit Version 6.
Close the window, and restart the computer. When it comes back on, you will be able to open files with Toolkit again.
Toolkit can also use files with a .ITK extension. Unless you are certain that you will never be using a .ITK file, we strongly suggest you repeat steps 4 through 11 for the .itk listing. The only particular difference you should see is that when the .itk files are set to open with Toolkit 6, the Description will show up as Toolkit 6 Files.
