Library saved as PDF file

@john-t Look carefully, are they .pdf or .pde. Before the sketches were called .ino they were .pde. Just use your OS facility to tell it to use the IDE as the default opener for .pde files. I use a Mac nbow and don't recall how to do it in windows, but at least start with right click 'Open with'. IOt may prompt you or after a few times set the default.

A quick google turns this up https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-default-programs-in-windows-e5d82cad-17d1-c53b-3505-f10a32e1894d

Hi Ron,

Yes, you are correct Ron, they are PDE files, sorry, my mistake.

I tried opening with IDE several times, but just ended up with a blank sketch page each time. So, in the end I downloaded the Arduino IDE onto my old laptop, which I haven't used for a long time, then downloaded the 'Radiohead' library and it works just fine on the Laptop. So I guess I'll use my old Laptop for the time being, as I would like to do the 'wireless Joystick control' exercise.

Thanks for you help though Ron, 

All the best.

John T

PDE files are used with Processing, a GUI-based Arduino development platform. The Arduino IDE used to use PDE files but changed to using INO files after version 1.0.

Have you tried just renaming the extension to "ino"? You can always use a text editor to open and examine them.

😎

Bill

@john-t Just change the association so that pde uses the Arduino IDE to open. As Bill suggests you could rename all the files but why change many plus future files when one change solves it forever.

@dronebot-workshop No need to re-name all current and future pde files, just change the default app dor file type pde to be the Arduino IDE. Can be found in Control Panel or Settings. MUST be done after the IDE is installed.

@john-t No idea why that would work, unless the old laptop has a very old file association of pde. Since it does seem to do that, I expect .ino files will not load. See my several other posts telling you the correct fix for this, it's a standard Windows procedure (even easier with a Mac) No idea how to do it in Linux.

Also if that laptop is that old you will encounter other errors, and if it is not Win 11 your security is in jeopardy depending on what version of Windows you are running. I think Win 7 and earlier is non-supported now and Win 10 will be soon.

Hi Ron,

I had to look up how to change a file extension, but that worked great.

I'm happy I got that working as I wanted to use two computers as suggested in the project so I can see if both  nRF24L01 's are talking to each other.

Once again, thank you both very much for your help.

All the best John T

@john-t Glad to hear that, it's trivially easy on a Mac, and used to be on older versions of Windows, but I had to go a searching for how to do it on Win11. Once I found it, it wasn't too bad other than locating the Arduino executable.

If you need two computers to perform your project, and the other one is Win10 or Win11, the procedure is likely the same, but if much older, it may be in a different place or at worse, in the registry. I suspect win 7 onward is one way and it may be different before then.

Note that all versions prior to Win 10 are no longer supported, and Win 10 support ends Oct 14, 2025.

Unsupported means NO security fixes so those old OSs will be compromised about 1 msec after support ends.

Good luck.