This may seem obvious, but has not been mentioned anywhere that I have looked. You can drag items off a stack to open them in a different application than usual (i.e. Neooffice instead of Microsoft Word). This is in addition to dragging items off the stack to remove them from the folder. This solved one of the most annoying issues about stacks for me! [robg adds: You can drag them onto docked applications, or onto applications in a Finder window, in the sidebar, or in the toolbar.]

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