File name extensions are how OS X recognizes file types, and changing the extension is one way to associate a file with a different program. Sometimes, however, changing the file extension does not ...

Microsoft uses file associations to set default programs for opening different file types on all its operating systems. As a result, when you open a file, be it text, image, or document, on your ...

BearPup sometimes wants to open a file in one program, and other times open it in another. He asked the Answer Line forum for an easy way to do this. Windows uses a file’s extension–the part of the ...

When you double-click a file on your computer, Windows may launch an application to run or display the file. Windows knows how to do this because it maintains a list of known file types and the names ...

Back in the pre-Mac OS X and macOS days, Apple’s System 9 and earlier relied on hidden metadata to associate files with apps. File extensions, those bits of text that follow a period at the end of a ...

The default setting for Windows is to not display a file's extension, which is the last period in a file name followed by 2 or 3 letters. Therefore, when viewing files in Windows you would only see ...

Red Eye Rose received a file with a strange extension. She doesn’t know into what program she should load it. Neither does Windows. I doubt that anyone knows all of the file extensions used since the ...

Despite the file extensions you see in the Add Existing Item dialog box, Visual Studio isn't limited to working with specific kinds of files. If you have some file that you want to include in your ...

One of our readers reported that all the file extensions have changed to some unknown file format. If so, it could be a virus! If a virus has changed all the files extensions to unknown applications, ...

Windows File Explorer provides a ton of options to change how you view your files. What you might not know is that a critical option is disabled by default, despite being vital to your system's safety ...