How can you determine its type by the file extension (what it is for) and what program can open it. How to determine a file type without an extension A file type can be determined by knowing your computer

All users who work in the operating system constantly open this or that data. In most cases, there are no problems starting them, it’s enough use any from launch methods:

• double click with the left mouse button;
• selecting an icon with the mouse, the tab button or arrows, and then pressing enter;
• Right-click, and then select: open or open with.

This happens in most cases because the system has a default association for the most common files, and it knows which program to use to open items with similar extensions.

However, sooner or later, the user will be faced with the fact that the system won't be able to recognize some data and will display a similar message.

Here it is worth paying attention to the extension, because in the future you will have to search for and install an application so that the OS learns to work with them. The extension can be found in another way. For example, you can right-click on an element and select its properties, in the main window you can see the type, you can also go to the tab Details and see it expanding there. The extension itself is written with a dot after the name.

In this case, the application is already associated with the extension and you can see this on the main page; in the case of an unknown element type, the application will not be displayed. You can just turn it on display extensions in Explorer. To do this, you need to go to the control panel, then go to folder options and uncheck the required item.

Which program to open the file

Now that the user knows the type, we can start opening it. Of course, the easiest way is to copy the name of the type into the search bar and write "How to open", however, it is possible to get to not the most trustworthy sites. Below are the types that most often used, as well as utilities with which you can work with them.

Rar, 7z — these are archives and can be opened by archivers that are similar in name to the extension. Winrar, 7zip - they can also work with most other archives.

Can be stored in PDF documents, drawings, pictures and a lot of other data. You can open them using foxit reader or acrobat reader.

DJVUs also represent scanned documents, often entire books are stored in this format. You can open it using DJVU reader, in some cases the data is not matched, then you should run the utility, select the file-open and specify the path to the element.

Flv, mkv, avi, mp4 and so on are video data. Some can be opened through a standard player, but for others you will have to download another player. In any case, it would be better to download and install K-Lite Codec Pack. It is capable of playing almost all known video formats.

WAV, mp3 etc are audio format files, any player, even built-in, is suitable for playing them. For some more specific types, you will have to search for and install additional utilities.

Fb2, mobi, this type includes e-books. They are understood by most readers and programs for reading books on Android. In Windows you can install the FB2 reader extension and open it through it.

Docx, these files are capable open utilities Microsoft Word 2007 and later. Before this version there was a .doc type, the old format is opened by new utilities, but the new one by old ones, of course, is not, so it’s worth paying attention to the office version.

Xls, xlsx - mapped to Excel 2007 and later. Younger versions open only the first format.

Ppt - in this format presentations are stored, created in powerpoint.

Stored in txt format text files, which can be opened with a regular notepad.

Files with unknown extension

A situation may arise that the required file is not in the list above. In this case, you will have to look for the necessary utilities through search engines, or you can use one of the search services by data type. For example, http://formats.ru, the user will need to enter the type and click on search. Next, the site will show the application that is required to run such an extension.

You can still use the service http://www.filetypes.ru/. Here you can search by file type or simply enter the extension in the search bar. The site will not only show the desired program, but also provide a download link.

To view video information, even in a not very common format, it is worth using video players, for example, the one presented on the page https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.videolan.vlc&hl=ru.

To unpack archives should be used by everyone, which are also available in the mobile version.

Working with exe format

To open and use standard Windows executable files, you will have to use one of the emulators.

BOCHS

First, you will need to download the application (https://trashbox.ru/link/bochs-android), and give your permission to install from unverified sources and install it. In addition to it will need to download archive SDL_for_BOCHS.zip, the contents of which are the utilities necessary for emulation. The user will need create at the root sdl directory and extract the contents of the archive into it. Next you will need to open the marked file in this directory.

AND enterthere ata0-slave: type=disk, mode=vvfat, path=/sdcard/HDD, journal=vvfat.redolog

You will also need to add the HDD directory to the root; all files should be placed in it. Now the device should be restarted. After launching the application, to call up the keyboard you need to click on the lower left corner, and to emulate pressing LMB/RMB you should use the volume keys.

QEMU

In this case, you should download SDLapp.apk, install it, and then download and install the Qemu Setting utility (https://trashbox.ru/link/qemu-android), in which you can more easily configure all system parameters without a lot of unnecessary steps.

DosBox

There is also such an excellent program as dosbox (https://trashbox.ru/link/dosbox-manager-android). She emulates the command line and will allow you to run old DOS games and some other files.

Imagine that you receive mail from your friends or colleagues, and as an attachment they sent you some kind of document in the form of a file attached to the letter, which contains the information you need. You save this file to your computer, but you see that instead of the usual icons of any program (Word, Excel, PDF, etc.), there is no icon, and Windows thinks that this is some kind of file with an unknown format. Often this happens due to the fact that the file in the process of attaching to the letter by the sender (or when the file is saved to the recipient's computer) loses its extension, and the Windows operating system ceases to understand what type of file is in front of it, and therefore does not know which program you need to open such a file. What is a file extension, and how to display and hide them in different versions of Windows, you can read in this article.

The second most common reason for losing a file extension is careless renaming of a file, when you have Windows set to display extensions of all known file types, and when you try to rename a file, you accidentally erase the file extension and end up with a document of unknown origin that you can no longer double-open with a click of the mouse. For example, your file was called “Letter.doc”, which used to be easily opened using Word, but after renaming it became known as “Letter for work”. Please note that the file no longer has the ".doc" extension that was accidentally erased when changing the file name, and now the file will not be opened by double-clicking, but will try to ask you which program to open this file with.

It's good if you know exactly what type of file is in front of you, and you can simply add the desired extension to it, for example, doc or xls, so that it automatically opens by double-clicking on it. In a separate article you can read about the most popular Windows file formats and their extensions. But what if you have a file in front of you whose type you don’t know? There are at least two ways to find out what type of file you have and give it the correct extension.

In this article, we will conduct an experiment - we will take several ready-made files of different formats, which we considered in the above article, erase their extensions, as if they were lost or accidentally deleted, and try to find out what type each file has, and what type it needs to be added extension to open it easily.

Several files will be involved in our experiment:

In the picture below, all files have their own extensions (highlighted by frames with red edges):

We delete all file extensions, and after that all program icons with which you can open these files disappear. On Windows XP it looks like this:

In Windows 7, it looks a little different, but the meaning is the same - the operating system does not know which program to open these files.

Now, when trying to open any file, Windows will prompt us to first select the program that needs to open this file:

And here you need to be careful, because the wrong choice of program for this type of file will lead to the fact that the file will not open, and the program will give an error, and the wrong association of the program for opening it will be assigned to this file.

Sometimes we can guess what type of file we have and what extension it should have by looking at the file name. But we will take the case when this is impossible.

So, we have a bunch of files with unknown formats and extensions, and we need to understand what these files are.

The first way to find out what type of file is in front of us is to look at the contents of these files using simple text editors, for example, Notepad, or better yet, either using the built-in viewers of various file managers, such as Total Commander or Far, or using free advanced text editor Notepad++. I recommend that you download and install it as it has many advantages over a regular notepad.

Download Notepad++ for free

We take the first file “Bonnie Tyler - Turn around”, select Notepad++ in the list of programs to open (if you haven’t installed it, use regular Notepad, but Notepad++ is still better, because when opening large files Notepad simply freezes), and we see some krakozyabry:

This should not confuse you, since to determine the file type it is enough to look at the first line of the file contents. Here you can see that the file begins with the letters “ID3”.

So, remember that if inside a file its contents begin with “ID3“, then this is a music file in mp3 format, and this is the extension that needs to be assigned to it. After specifying the extension, the file will be recognized by the system as music, and you will be able to listen to it.

Open the second “bonus” file with the same Notepad++ program and look at its contents:

As we can see in the first line of the file contents, it is repeatedly mentioned that this is an mp4 video file (highlighted in red in the screenshot above). And in general, if you see text like “ftypmp42” inside a file, then, as a rule, this is an mp4 video file.

Performing the same operation of viewing the contents with all other files, we obtain the following information:

The second method of determining the file type requires an Internet connection, and it is also desirable that the file size be small, since we will use an Internet service to determine the file format.

File format detection service

We click on the “select file” button, indicate our file for analysis (I’ll try to analyze one of the complex “Meeting Materials” files to see if this analyzer can cope and understand that this file was created in MS PowerPoint 2007 (in it had a pptx extension, and we removed it during our experiment).After selecting the file, click the “Analyze” button and get the following result:

As you can see, the service determined with 97% probability that this is a PowerPoint file with the pptx extension. And since this file is also a container archive containing other files inside it, the analyzer also indicated a three percent chance that it could be a zip archive.

Let’s also try to check whether this service can determine the type of our “resolution” file, from which we have erased the pdf extension. We upload the file to the service, click the “Analyze” button and see that the service coped with the task perfectly:

As I already said, the disadvantage of this service may be that in order to analyze a file, it needs to download it completely, and if you have a large file, then this process may take a long time, or even not be completed at all. Therefore, if unidentified files are large, try first using the first method to determine its type, namely, viewing the file contents through the file manager or Notepad++ editor.

Of course, you can use special programs to determine the type of file, for example, File Type Verificator, but in my opinion, it will be much easier and faster to use one of the two methods proposed above.

So, dear visitors of the site, today we have discussed how you can determine the format (type) of a file if its extension has been lost. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments to this article.

Have you ever received files without an extension by e-mail or other communication channels? Such files look like a white icon, which indicates that the system does not know which program to open it.

In response to an attempt to open a mysterious document, Windows will prompt you to select a program from the list yourself.

This “behavior” is due to the fact that the operating system, analyzing file extensions, matches them with the desired program and assigns them appropriate icons so that not only the machine, but also the user understands what type of information he is dealing with. In our example, the system thinks that the file we are trying to open has a .09 extension, which is not in its directory, and therefore displays such a message.
How does it happen that the received document or other type of file does not have an extension? Most likely, the fact is that your interlocutor, while editing the name of the document, simply erased that same extension.

How to open a file if there is no extension, but the contents of the file are known

It’s good if we know the sender and know what type of document was sent to us. For example, we know for sure that this file is a table. In this case, we will simply select a table editor from the list offered by the system and safely open our file.

To do this, hover the cursor over the file, right-click and select “Open with” from the context menu.

Then, click "Use an app from this PC"

Scroll down the list of programs to the end and select “Find an application on this computer”

You will be prompted to look for the desired program in the folder with installed programs Program Files. If the office software package is installed on your computer, you will be able to find the corresponding folder. If you are using free software, then instead of Microsoft Office there may be folders such as Libre Office or Open Office

Another option is to add the extension manually, for example.xls, if we are talking about an Excel table.

Place the cursor over the file, call up the context menu with the right mouse button and select “Rename”.

Then carefully, after the period, enter the correct extension and press Enter to save the changes. We agree with the warning, click "Yes".

But what if there is no way to specify the file type?
Needless to say, if the sender is unknown, then you should not try to open the attachments under any circumstances, so as not to expose your computer to a virus infection. But if the file was received from a reliable source and does not raise any doubts, then you can find out its type only by analyzing its contents.

How to determine the type (format) of a file by its contents

Any file, be it a text document, an image, or anything else, is nothing more than a structured code that is understandable to a program designed to read and / or edit it. As mentioned above, the operating system selects a program to open a file based on its extension. It is written after the file name separated by a dot. By parsing the image1.jpeg file, where .jpeg is the extension, the system understands that this is an image, and an image viewer must be used to read this file. By changing the file extension from .jpeg to .txt, for example, we certainly will not turn the image into a text file, the system will simply try to open it with a text editor, as a result of which we will see only a set of characters. Obviously, the format (type) of a file is determined not by the extension, but by its content.
To see in the contents of a file signs indicating that it belongs to a certain type, we will use a hexadecimal editor, for example Hex Editor or an online service.
Whatever jpeg image we open, we can observe similarities in the first three pairs of numbers, which indicate the file type.

It remains to find which format the encoding corresponds to. But you can not complicate your life and use a ready-made application that will do all the work. In our example, this will be the File Type Verificator (FTV) program. It is freely distributed and has a clear Russian-language interface.
Finding out the file format using this program is as easy as shelling pears. Click the add file button

select the desired file through the explorer window,

and we see the file format corresponding to its contents.

The program provides the ability to rename a file by changing its extension. To use this function, click “File” -> “Start renaming...”

And in the window that then appears, click apply if you agree with the option proposed by the program.

After such manipulations, the problematic file will be opened by the desired program.

Very often, users have to face a problem when a file is of a certain type, we try to open it with the default program, but it does not open. For example, they send a text file by mail (extension .txt), we open it, and there are only a huge number of incomprehensible characters. This file may well turn out to be, for example, a .rar archive. It may be completely unclear to an inexperienced user how to determine the type of this file and what program can open it. It is also possible that the file has no extension at all. In this case, it is displayed by the system as "unidentified".

In order to determine the file type even if there is no extension, i.e. a set of characters (usually three) after the dot at the end of the file name, for example, “doc”, “gif”, we suggest using a free program File Type Verifier (FTV) Shedko software company.

Downloading the program

You can download the File Type Verificator (FTV) program from the official developer website using the link.

If you have any difficulties downloading the program from the above link, we suggest downloading the program from the free Yandex.Disk service using this link. The program file corresponds to the current version (April 2011). The administration kindly asks the reader of the article to leave a message in the comments if the file is not available. Thank you.

Program installation

Run the downloaded program file, the installation wizard window will open:

Check the box " I accept the terms of the agreement", click " Further". A window for selecting the installation directory will open:

Once the installation is complete, the following window will open:

If you want the program to start immediately, leave a checkmark next to " Launch File Type Verificator". Click the " button Ready".

If after restarting the program you see that it has an English interface, go to Main menu to point " Tools" and select " Select Language" (Fig. 6):

In the window that opens (Fig. 7), select from the drop-down list under " Select preferable language" paragraph " Russian.ini", click " OK" and restart the program.

If the Russian language is not there, we suggest turning to the point " Russification of the program". If you do not need the Russian interface or it is already available in the program, you can skip the next subsection of the article.

Russification File Type Verificator

To Russify the File Type Verificator (FTV) program, you need to download a special file (" Russian.zip") on this page .

Now you need to extract the files from the archive. To do this, you can use an archiver such as WinRar. Also on our website there is an article on the free Zipeg program for Windows. It allows you to extract files from the archive. The article is available at.

Unzip the files from the archive into some temporary folder. After that, copy them (there will be 2 files: " Russian.ini" And " russian.chm") to the folder " langs". To do this, open " My computer" (or press the keys on your keyboard " Win+E"; key " Win"has a system icon" Windows" and is usually located next to the " key ctrl"), select the drive that you selected when installing the program (if you installed the program in the default folder, then most likely it is the "C:" drive). Then go to the " Program Files", find the program installation folder " FileType Verifier", and in it you will find the folder " langs".

Surely everyone has come across a file without an extension? Do you have any questions about how to open it? One way is to just guess and try to change the file extension to different file types and try to open the file. Sometimes it works, but sometimes you'll be unlucky and won't be able to guess. And the method of scientific poking can take a fair amount of time, if of course you are stubborn, and you desperately need to open this file

In this article, I'll show you a quick and more accurate way to determine which file type you can use. In order to do this, I created several test files, PDF, JPEG, MP3, EXE and DLL, and simply erased their extension. Obviously, your file may be a different type, but the procedure will be the same for any file type. I chose the test files completely randomly
For this procedure you need to know HEX– file code. Well, you are already scared and thinking how abstruse all this is. No, for this we need a text editor, such as standard Notebook, or you can download (I even recommend doing this, it is much more functional and works faster) Notepad++ .

Opening files without extension

Now we just open files without an extension in a test editor, I use Notepad++, but the method is the same for everyone.

First in line PDF test and we see in the very first lines information about the expansion in explicit form.

And we see in JPEG at the beginning of the line, which is not clear JFIF, V DLL And EXE – MZ, A MP3– ID3. Next, the Internet will help us, we enter a phrase into the search engine, for example ID3 format, or JFIF extension. And we'll see what ID3- this is from English. Identify an MP3, some metadata format, but it doesn’t matter, it’s probably an mp3 file. Upon request JFIF got JPEG File Interchange Format, some specification, MZ– executable file format EXE And DLL. That is, the first lines contain all the information we need, and we can easily open any file without the extension

Overall, I think it will be much faster to figure this out than randomly trying different file extensions without any idea. If you still can't figure out what file you have, leave a comment and I'll try to help. Enjoy!