File Name Extensions

A set of two/three characters that helps users to understand that what kind of information or data is in the said file and which program or utility should be used to open it. It is called an extension as it appears at the end of a file name, e-g image.bmp, the extension is .bmp and its showing that its a bitmap image. Following are some common and important file name extensions with their abbreviations/details that one should know and try to remember for daily use.

3DS: 3D Studio Graphics format

3GP(Third Generation Platform): Mobile Phone Video

XLSX: Office Open XML Workbook (Spreadsheets) - Microsoft Excel 2007

XLS: Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet - Microsoft Excel

ZIP: Archive PKZip - WinZip - Mac OS X

WAV: Sound format (Microsoft Windows RIFF WAVE) - Media Player

TXT: Common name for ASCII text file

TMP: Temporary file ALL PROGRAMS

TIFF: TIFF (tagged image format file) bitmapped file Alchemy - PhotoStyler -PageMaker - CorelDRAW

SYS: System file - device driver or hardware configuration info - DOS

SWF: Shockwave Flash - Macromedia

SQL: SQL language code - Any SQL database

PPT: Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation - Microsoft PowerPoint

PPS: Microsoft PowerPoint Slideshow (stand alone slideshow)

PNG: Portable Network Graphics

PHP: PHP file

PHP3: PHP 3 file

PHP4: PHP 4 file

MPEG: Multimedia containter format, video, audio - MPEG Player, Winamp

MP3: MPEG audio stream, layer 3 - AWAVE, CoolEdit(+PlugIn), Winamp, many others

MP4: Multimedia container format

MID: Standard MIDI file - music synthetizers, Winamp

JPEG: Joint Photography Experts Group graphics file format - QPeg - FullView - Display

JAVA: Java source code file

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language (WWW) - Netscape - Mosaic - many

FLV: Flash video file - Flash Video Player

EXE: Directly executable program