Files Extension

The Files Extension are the suffix of two or more characters and numbers at the end of a file. It is usually split by the dot symbol.

There are some operating systems that hide the extension. However it is internally stored.

The file extension is like the surname of files. You can guess which type it is from the extension.

There can be many types. These are the most common nowadays:

. Audio files: Music, sound and audio archives.

.Video files: images and pictures created which some of the picture and images editors available either free or paid.

.Document files: programs like microsoft word, works, wordperfect, notepad or other related software. Documents are text files that contains essentially text.

.Compression formats: the size of an archive depends on the data of the file. There are some files that are too big so they need to reduce the size. Compressed programs help recuding the size of the files. They are specially created to reduce the size of the archives. Tipically images and videos are the formats with a bigger size.

There are many other types available on the internet for your computer, tablet or smartphone. There are free viewers, converters and editors online to handle with all this file specific formats.

Basically a format is what the extension refers to.

The file extension is a group of letters or characters that accompany the name of the file and in the case of windows, it can be used to indicate its format or what type of file it is.

We will find it at the end of the name of the file, where we will see a period and some characters, File.jpg for example, in this case, the extension would be jpg.

Some of the best known extensions could be: .avi, .exe, .mp3, .wmv, .wav, .ra, .jpg, .gif, .pdf, .mpeg, .mov, .rar, .zip, .doc , .docx, .iso, .bin, .nrg, .pps, etc.

This extension can be used to tell the system with which application to open each type of file. In the case of .jpg for example, we can assign a photo retouching program, image viewing, the windows viewer itself, etc. So whenever you find a file of this type, with this extension, run it with that program.

Depending on the configuration of our windows system, file extensions may not be visible, so if we want to see them we must activate their view. In Windowsfacil you have a manual to see or hide file extensions, as well as a small list with some extensions as an example.

If we have the extensions view activated, when we rename a file, we must also add the extension that was previously.