Find the right extension

Any number of times you may run into a file that has an extension (the characters after the “dot,” as in .doc) and you wonder what that extension really is.

Google lets you go out and look for information by type of extension. Under Advanced Search at Google (and other search sites) you can search just for files with a given extension.

When you don’t know what an extension is, one great resource is www.filext.com. Plug in an unknown extension and you’ll find as much as you need to know, including the company whose software created that type and which applications handle it.