Association

A term used to describe how a computer file is associated with a software program. For example, in the Microsoft Windows operating system, a file with a .TXT extension is commonly associated with Notepad or WordPad by default. When a file is associated with a program, that program will be used each time to read or view that type of file.

• Additional information about file associations and extensions can be found on our file extension page.

Also see: Operating System definitions