Why doesn't an embroidery design show when I double click?

The very most common reason an embroidery design you have on your computer doesn’t show up when you double click on it, is that the computer does not have embroidery software to display the design with. Most computers come with image display software of some kind, so typical image files can be displayed without loading anything else, but stitch files are not read the same way as image files, so embroidery software is needed. This is one of five good reasons to have embroidery software on your computer.

If you do have embroidery software on your computer, and are still having difficulty opening embroidery files, see the related FAQ: My embroidery file opens as a word document? The second most common reason your embroidery files won’t open is that the computer has not been told which program to open the files with. Fortunately, this is not hard to correct.