What Is a File Name Extension in Windows XP?

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Ross. Thanks for coming to expertvillage.com, let’s begin. File name extensions, I recommend that you show them. What happens if you don’t, it can become very confusing. Right here, you’ll see business budget. It states it’s a text document. Let’s say I want to go ahead and rename this. I’m going to right click, go down to rename, and I want to say doc, which would be typically a Microsoft Word document. It still shows this text icon and still says text document. That’s because…I’m going to right click, and go down to properties. Since this is a text document, I’m going to change. It’s going to show its a real file name, business budget.doc. text. In windows, the characters after the last dot determines its relationship to the program that it uses to run, and hence the icon that shows up with it. This is hidden, and typically used if you do not show extensions. So I would show the extensions. To do that, you simply go up to tools, folder options, view, and you go down to where it says hide extension of known file types. No we do not want to do that, and click OK. Now, the extensions show up. Before, these did not show the .txt, which means it’s a text document using notepad. You can see here this one does show its full name now, business budget. doc. text."