Ok here’s a step by step guide with pictures on how to re-associate your .uproject files in Windows:
- Open the Epic Launcher and click on the Down Arrow to the right of the Launch button for the engine version you want to use. Choose the “Create Shortcut” option. This will place a shortcut to the Editor on your desktop.
- Right click on the Editor Shortcut and choose “Properties” this will open the Shortcut tab and show you the installation directory of the Editor on your system. Mine was “C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.18\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor.exe” but this will vary depending on where you chose to install the editor.
- Open the Start Menu and search for “File Type” without the quotes in the search bar and select the “Change the file type associated with a file extension” option. In windows 10 this is called “Change the default app for each type of file”.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the list until you get the the file extensions that start with the letter U and you’ll see the .uproject file type. Select this and hit the “Change Program” button in the top right corner. In windows 10 this process is more complex if windows hasn’t detected that Unreal Engine can open .uproject files so I refer you to this link: How to Change File Associations in Windows 10 | Digital Trends
- Once you click on the “Change Program” button a new window will pop up with suggested programs. Ignore these and hit the “Browse” button in the bottom right corner. This will open a small File Explorer where you need to navigate to the directory that we discovered with our Editor shortcut. Again, in my case this was “C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.18\Engine\Binaries\Win64” You can copy and paste the directory to speed things up, just don’t include the “UE4Editor.exe” part. Find UE4 Editor in the list and select it and hit the “Open” button.
- Once this is done you will be taken back to the Open With window and you’ll see an icon for “Unreal Engine” in the list. Hit the OK button on this window and you’re done. Close the File association window and double click on your .uproject file. It will now open in the editor.