Page 390 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

When you double-click this icon… …this program opens it.
Fishing trip.docx Microsoft Word

Quarterly results.xlsx Microsoft Excel
Home page.htm your web browser

Butterfly.psd Photoshop
Agenda.wpd Corel WordPerfect

A home movie.avi Windows Media Player

Tip
For an exhaustive list of every file extension in the world, visit whatis.com; click File Extensions.

Behind the scenes, Windows maintains a massive table that lists every
extension and the program that “owns” it. More on this in a moment.

Displaying Filename Extensions

It’s possible to live a long and happy life without knowing much about
these extensions. Because file extensions don’t feel very user-friendly,

Microsoft designed Windows to hide the suffixes on most icons (Figure 6-
10). If you’re new to Windows, you may never have even seen them.

Some people appreciate the way Windows hides the extensions, because the

screen becomes less cluttered and less technical-looking. Others make a
good argument for the Windows 3.1 days, when every icon appeared with
its suffix.

For example, in a single File Explorer window, suppose one day you
discover that three icons all seem to have exactly the same name:
PieThrower. Only by making filename extensions appear would you
discover the answer to the mystery: that one of them is called

PieThrower.ini, another is an internet-based software updater called
PieThrower.upd, and the third is the actual PieThrower program,

PieThrower.exe.