What are the most used file extensions in Windows?
Windows file names have two parts, the name, a period (which separates the name from the file extension), and the extension (suffix). The extension is a three or four character abbreviation placed after the break point. For example, in the file “letter.docx” the word “letter” is the name of the file while “docx” is its extension.
Extensions are important because they tell the computer what type of file it will be, with this information the operating system knows which applications to run to open the file. For example, the .docx extension tells you that the file is a Microsoft Word document file.
If you want to open a file in Windows that was created in Mac OS X, you may need to add a Mac OS X filename extension so that Windows can recognize it.
Here is a list of the most common file extensions in Windows:
| Extension | Description |
| AIFF or AIF | Audio Interchange File Format |
| TO | Basic Audio |
| AVI | Multimedia Audio/Video |
| BAT | PC batch file |
| BMP | Windows BitMap |
| CLASS or JAVA | Java files |
| CSK | ClarisWorks for Windows |
| CVS | Canvas |
| DBF | dbase II, III, IV data |
| DIF | Data Interchange format |
| DOC | Microsoft Word for Windows/Word97 |
| EPS | Encapsulated PostScript |
| EXE | PC Application |
| FM3 | Filemaker Pro databases |
| GIF | Graphics Interchange Format |
| HQX | Macintosh BinHex |
| HTM or HTML | Web page source text |
| JPG or JPEG | JPEG graphic |
| MAC | MacPaint |
| MAP | Web page imagemap |
| MDB | MS Access database |
| MID or MIDI | MIDI sound |
| MOV or QT | QuickTime Audio/Video |
| MTB or MTW | MiniTab |
| Acrobat -Portable document format | |
| P65 | PageMaker |
| PNG | Public Network graphic |
| PPT | PowerPoint |
| PSD | Adobe PhotoShop |
| PSP | PaintShop Pro |
| QXD | QuarkXPress |
| OUT | RealAudio |
| RTF | Rich Text Format |
| SIT | Stuffit Compressed Archive |
| TAR | UNIX TAR Compressed Archive |
| TIF | TIFF graphic |
| TXT | ASCII text |
| WAV | Windows sound |
| WK3 | Lotus 1-2-3 |
| WKS | MS Works |
| WPD or WP5 | WordPerfect |
| XLS | Excel spreadsheet |
| ZIP | PC Zip Compressed Archive |
