DE Oracle @ UMUC

Help Me Open This Document!

Deborah Schroeder

Senior Instructional Support Specialist

Office of Instructional Services and Support

Published: January-February 2009

Category: » Fac-resources » Faculty-support

Have you ever received a file from a student and had trouble opening it, even though you knew what program was used to create it? Or have you taken a look at a file extension and were not quite sure what program should be used to open it? While there are some more-or-less standard file extensions such as .doc, .xls, .jpg, .gif, .html, and .htm that most people see on a daily basis, there are many more file extensions you may encounter at some point during your teaching career. This article discusses some not-so-easily-recognizable file extensions as well as a few common ones.

Let's begin with the most common file extensions you may encounter with student documents—those coming from the Microsoft Office suite. It is no surprise that many students and instructors use Microsoft Office for writing papers, calculating statistics, creating slideshow presentations, designing fliers, or creating databases. Since Microsoft launched the Office suite, it has been popular with PC and Mac users alike. The file extension for each of the Office programs became commonplace as the population of Office users grew. If you saw .doc, you knew that the file was created in Word. Likewise, if you saw .xls, you knew it was Excel, .ppt was PowerPoint, and .mbd was Access. 

Within the last year or so, however, you may have started receiving files from students containing slightly different file extensions such as .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx. While the first three characters of these file extensions look familiar, the added x makes it less clear what kind of files they really are. When Microsoft released Office 2007, it modified, for many of its programs, the well-known three-character file extensions—causing quite a bit of confusion amongst the creators/receivers of these documents. 

If you do not have Office 2007 on your computer and you try to open an Office 2007 file with one of your respective programs, you may be prompted to download the Compatibility Pack, or you may encounter an error telling you that you do not have the proper software version. If you are prompted to download the Compatibility Pack, you should go ahead and do so. The Compatibility Pack can be installed quickly and will allow you to open all Office 2007 documents with an earlier version of Office software. If you were not prompted to download the Compatibility Pack, you can download it directly from the Microsoft Download Center. (For step-by-step instructions on installing the Compatibility Pack, see the installation tutorial.)

Of course, the Microsoft Office suite is not the only software used by students. Many UMUC courses require them to use a variety of programs to create Web pages, images, Flash movies, audio, and video. The following chart, while not exhaustive, lists the programs your students may use, the file extensions associated with those programs, and the software you can use to open or at least view those particular files: 

If the file extension you are looking for is not listed in the chart above, you can always do an Internet search. Here are a few sites you may find useful:

• FILExt - File Extension Source - Use the search box to find the software that will open the file.
• File.Extensions - Categorizes file extensions according to type.
• internet.com - A Webopedia chart that lists data formats and file extensions, organized alphabetically.
• The Help Center - A Web site that alphabetizes and defines file extensions.