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File Extensions

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5 views6 pages

File Extensions

Uploaded by

Malish
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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File Extensions

In the next section, we discuss how to work with images. Before we get to that, it's a good
idea to check to make sure you have files extensions switched on.

A file extension is the dot and letters at the end of a file name. For example, a picture you
take on your camera phone will probably end in .JPG or .JPEG. The letters stand for Joint
Photographic Experts Group, and tell Windows and other programmes that it is an image
file. Other file extensions for images are GIF, PNG, and TIFF. If you have file extensions
switched off you won't be able to tell what sort of image you have. Not only that, somebody
could send you an attachment to an email that looks like this:

picture_file.jpg

If you just saw the JPG ending, you might open the file, thinking it was an image. However,
the real file ending could be this:

picture_file.jpg.exe

But you won't see the .exe at the end if you have file extensions switched off. The exe means
it's an executable programme that will be installed onto your computer. If you opened the file,
the programme would install automatically. And it certainly won't have your best interests at
heart!

In the image below, we have four files showing, but no file extensions, so we could be
vunerable to this sort of attack:

To switch on file extensions, start Windows Explorer by clicking its icon just to the right of
the start button:
The default for Windows Explorer is to hide the menu bars. To view them, press the left ALT
key on your keyboard (the one to the left of the space bar). You should see this at the top of
Windows Explorer:

If you still can't see the menu bars click Organize > Layout > Menu Bar:
Now that you have a menu bar, click the Tools item. From the Tools menu, select Folder
Options:

You should see the following dialogue box appear:

Click on the View tab at the top to see the following:


Have a look at the list of options and locate "Hide extensions for known file types":
As, you can see there is a check mark in the box next to this entry. If yours is the same, click
the box to remove the check mark. Then click the Apply button at the bottom. Click OK to
get rid of the dialogue box. You should now be able to see the extensions on the end of file
names:
Our four images are now showing the JPG file extension.

Now that you can see file extensions, we'll make a start on working with images in Windows
7.

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