The Windows operating system supports displaying the extensions of the files in the system. By default, this feature is disabled, but its activation is available through the corresponding menu item.
Displaying extensions
The display of extensions is enabled in the "Explorer" through the settings of the properties of the folders. To change the setting you want, open any folder on your desktop. At the top of the window that appears, click "View" - "Folder Options". You will see a menu of settings for displaying files in the system.
Go to the "View" tab using the top panel. Then go down to the "Hidden files and folders" section, above which the necessary option "Hide extensions for registered file types" will be available. Uncheck this line. Click "OK" to save the changes. If in the future you want to cancel the changes made and turn off the display of extensions, return to this menu and check the box again in this section.
If you are a Windows 8 user, the folder properties menu will work a little differently. Go to the system desktop and open any folder presented on it. After that, go to the "View" tab, which is available at the top of the window. Click the "Options" button to go to the settings menu. After that, go to the "View" menu and, similarly to the above example, configure the display of extensions.
Common file types
In the system, several types can be distinguished among the most frequently used files. To store text information without using various additional formatting options,.txt files are used. The.doc and docx extensions are reserved for storing Microsoft Word documents (.xls,.xlsx,.ppt and.pptx for Excel and PowerPoint, respectively). Popular image extensions are.jpg,.png,.gif. Videos are usually stored in.avi,.mp4,.wmv, etc. files. System libraries have.dll and.sys extensions. To avoid problems with the functioning of the system, they should not be removed.
Executable files have an.exe extension. They are used to run applications and installers. Another popular document type is.rar, which can store many other files.. Zip and.7z are similar packages.
To start editing documents of some extensions, you may need to install additional programs. So, to run.pdf you will need to install Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat or one of the other alternative utilities.
