If you're like most computer users, you regularly create a number of files. Things like letters, spreadsheets, Web pages, presentations, and more. And you probably have files scattered all over your hard drives. As you create more and more files, finding, using, and organizing them rapidly becomes a difficult and time-consuming chore.There are a number of ways in which you can manipulate and organize your files, as well as decipher the various file extensions you encounter.

What Do All Those Extensions Mean?

There are literally dozens of file extensions. Extensions are the three letters after the name of a file that identify the function of the file or the application in which it was created or can be edited. But with the number of file types out there, knowing what each extension means or the application with which it's associated can be tricky.Windows Explorer (often just called Explorer) is the default Windows file manager. One of the features of Explorer is the ability to customize how you view files and folders. The default view is a list showing the names of the files and folders on your computer. You can display more information by selecting Details from Explorer's View menu. This shows not only the name and extension of a file, but it's size, the date and time at which it was last modified, and it's type (for example, an OpenOffice.org Text Document).

Some people find this view to be very cluttered. Instead, you can use Windows Explorer to find excellent information on files and their extensions. Choose Folder Options from the View menu, then click File Types. The window that appears contains list of all the types of files Windows recognizes, listed not by extension but by the name of the file type. So, you see “Adobe Acrobat Document” rather than “PDF”. If you click on a file type, information on its extension and the application that opens it appears.

File Associations

Of course, memorizing what individual extensions mean takes a little time. Luckily, Windows understands file associations. This means that files that were created or can be edited in a particular program know what that program is. There are two easy ways to determine file associations. The first way is to open Windows Explorer and navigate to the directory containing the file with the unknown extension. Double click the file. It should open in the application with which it's associated. The other way to determine the association is to look at the icon beside the file name, which should be the icon of the program with which the file is associated. If the icon is just the flying Windows symbol, then the file isn't associated with a program.

You can create an association in Explorer by right clicking on the file and choosing Open With. This opens a window containing a list of programs installed on you computer. Choose a program from the list. If you want to use that program to open files of that type in the future, select the Always use this program to open this type of file option.