In most cases, you don’t need to open a design in embroidery software on your computer to use it—you can just transfer the design to your machine and start stitching.
If you want to open a design in software, first extract it from the zipped folder and save it to another location on your computer.
Then you’ll need to make sure your computer knows what embroidery software program to use to open the design. (If you’ve ever seen your computer try to open an embroidery design in a non-embroidery program, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, that’s likely because it didn’t know what program to use for embroidery file formats.) There are a couple of ways to do this:
Open software, then the design
Open your embroidery software program. Then navigate to File>Open or similar, find the design on your computer, and select it to open. Here’s an example:
Create a file association
For Windows 11: find the design on your computer. Right-click on the design, select “Open With” and then “Choose another app.”
Select the app you want to use, then click “Always.”
These steps may vary slightly for other operating systems.
