Windows Questions and Answers - Cannot Open E-mail Attachments

Mike writes in with a Windows question:
Question:Often, when I get an email with an attachment, I cannot open the attachment. I get the message that Windows cannot open the attachment without knowing the program that created it. My question is what do you do when you find the program that created it? Please advise. Thanks, Mike

Answer: Windows uses file extensions to determine what program to open what type of file with. For example if you have a Word document called resume.doc then the .doc on the end tells Windows to use Microsoft Word to open the document. If you don't have Word installed on your computer and you try to open a .doc file then Windows doesn't know what to do with it and will ask you what program you want to open the file with. If you don't see the last three letters after the name of the file like .doc or .jpg then you need to enable Windows to display them. Click this link to find out how to do so.
 
Click this link to find out how to make a program open a certain type of file.

Keep in mind that just because you tell Windows to open a certain file type with a certain program that it will actually open it correctly.
 
To find out what program is associated with what file you can check several sites online that will tell you such as http://filext.com/ or http://www.file-ext.com/r.html

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