LibGuides: File Guidelines: File Extensions

What are File Extensions?

file ex·ten·sion
noun → \ ˈfī(-ə)l \ \ ik-ˈsten(t)-shən \
COMPUTING
plural noun: file extensions

DEFINITION:

a group of letters occurring after a period in a file name, indicating the format of the file.

Image: Poster about The Fab 5. The most popular image file extensions: . TIFF, .PNG, .JPG, .GIF, and .BMP. Other image extensions include image editors (photoshop- .PSD, GIMP- .XCF), Illustration and Design (Illustrator- .AI, Coreldraw- .CRD), and vector files (.SVG, .EPS).

Poster Image: Blackboard-friendly file extensions. Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX), Adobe Acrobat Reader (.PDF), WordPad (.RTF), NotePad (.TXT), and WordPerfect (.WPD). Writer-opensource (.ODT and .OTT) and Microsoft Works (.WPS) are not Blackboard-friendly and require file conversion for use.

Poster Image: The 3 Most Common Presentation Files: PowerPoint Slideshow (.PPS) and PowerPoint Presentation (.PPT and .PPTX). Other file types: Keynote presentation (.KEY), Prezi Presentation (.PEZ), and OpenOffice Impress Presentation (.ODP).

Image: The 4 Spreadsheet File Extensions. Excel, Works, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and Notepad (.CSV), Excel 2007, 2010, OpenOffice LibreOffice, and NeoOffice (.ODS), Excel 2016 and Microsoft Works (.XLR), and Excel 2007 and OpenOffice (.XLSX).

Image: Most Versatile audio file extensions: .MP3, .M4A, and .AAC. Standard PC audio file: .WAV/PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) A.K.A. Waveform Audio. Used for everything from system game sounds to high quality audio. This is the default format when digitizing oral histories and interview recordings. Default audio files: Windows (.WMA) and MAC iTunes (.AAC).

File Extensions Cheat Sheet

File Extension - Most Used List
File extensions and their compatible programs categorized by: misc, text, spreadsheet, video, image, presentations, and zip.

Table of File Formats - National Archives Records Management
Table of file extensions and formats organized into 10 categories based upon the file type.
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File Extension/Format Categories:
1. Computer Aided Design
2. Digital Audio
3. Digital Moving Images
3.1 Digital Cinema
3.2 Digital Video
4. Digital Still Images
4.1 Digital Photographs
4.2 Scanned Text
4.3 Digital Posters
5. Geospatial Formats
6. Presentation Formats
7. Textual Data
8. Structured Data Formats
9. Email
10. Web Records