Default for opening imported file

When opening an unfamiliar text file for the first time, on my intel iMac, a dialog box asked me, choose an application. So I chose TextEdit, which it made into the default, and since then every file of the same type opens in TextEdit. I can open them in Pages only by going to "open with," after they've already been opened in TextEdit. I'm going through this with dozens of files that I'm copying from a PowerMac. Is there a way to change the default setting to Pages? Does anyone have an idea about this?

It's an easy fix:
1. Select the text file and right-click and select "Open With" and click on "Other..."
2. Choose the application you want to associate the file with and click on the "Always Open With" checkbox. Finally click on "Open."

Now it'll always open the particular file format (rtf, txt, etc.) with the application you chose.

Click on the file once, hit Command I.
Near the bottom of that screen that pops up will be a section titled "Open With".
Click the tiny triangle next to it so that the section expands. You can click the name of the default application and choose "other" from the drop-down list, then search for the app you want to use.
Under that you will see "use this application to open all documents like this one" Click the Change All button right below the name of the new application on the Info screen.
Do this from a Finder window and don't try to do it from inside an application.

Choices for opening imported files

Thanks a lot, that works as you say, but I want to share what else I've noticed, in case other readers are doing this, too. For Simple Text (aka Text Edit) files created with OS 7, 8, or 9: OS X will open them either with Text Edit or Pages. It's easy enough to choose the default that you want. But OS X will not open my Classic Microsoft Word files in Pages '08, when I bring them over from my PowerMac. I can always open them with Text Edit, but along with the text there is a lot of gibberish which I figure comes from the formatting. I find that if I save a duplicate file in Classic in an unformatted version to bring over, on my iMac I get a clean text-only file to work with.

I had some weird results in opening the formatted Word files, in fact. At least two of them not only had the order of the text jumbled, but prior versions of the text content showed up out of thin air, stuff which had disappeared in Classic mode when I saved my changes many months earlier.

Do you know if there's any way to bring over Word files complete with all the formatting? I have some fairly long documents with a great deal of text. If I had the latest Word application for iMac installed, would it do the job? Just wondering.

Formatting is just plain different across every software on different OS. Hence the PDF format has become so popular. You might have the luck of having the same document look exactly same on Office 2008 and Office 2007, but I found there are still tiny little errors here and there especially in complex documents.