Open Externally

Double-clicking a file VSCode can't render — an Excel workbook, a Word document, a PDF — opens a tab showing the file in hex, with a button that launches the system default app for it, exactly as a double-click in your file manager would.

No more "The file is not displayed in the text editor because it is either binary or uses an unsupported text encoding."

What you get

• A classic hex dump (offset / hex / ASCII, first 64 KB) so you can peek at the bytes without leaving VSCode.
• An Open in system default app button — Excel for .xlsx, Word for .docx, your PDF reader for .pdf, and so on, per your OS's file associations.

Covered file types

Out of the box: .xlsx .xlsm .xls .docx .doc .pptx .ppt .pdf.

To cover more, map the pattern to this editor in your settings:

"workbench.editorAssociations": {
    "*.ods": "openExternally.systemDefaultApp"
}

Right-click → Open With... still offers VSCode's built-in editors for any covered file.

How it works

VSCode has no "hand unknown files to the OS" fallback — the editorAssociations setting can only point at editors living inside VSCode. So this extension registers a custom editor (priority default) for the patterns above. The editor is a webview showing the hex dump; the button calls vscode.env.openExternal on the file.