Before now, whenever completed work on a project, I just happily save it by pressing Ctrl + S and Enter, then walk away. Most of the times, I got away with this action, but one day after working on a presentation of about 56 pages, and going through all the stress of designing the graphics and pictures, and after saving to my flash to deliver it, lo and behold, it did not open when I tried to open it. All what I saw was “XML file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents or file name might contain invalid characters”. I was just grateful that I had a back up copy. This caused me to waste time and money. Below are tips on how to save on file extension.
Viewing your File Extension?
A file extension is a group of letters occurring after a period in a file name, indicating the format of the file. It is a way of labeling the names of files, so you and your computer can keep track of what they contain and which program can open it.
The acronym after the (.) shows the type of file extension.
Now, here is a list of the various types of file extensions that we have:
The following table lists the file extensions in Office Word 2007, Office Excel 2007, and Office PowerPoint 2007.
Word
XML file type Extension
Document .docx
Macro-enabled document .docm
Template .dotx
Macro-enabled template .dotm
Excel
XML file type Extension
Workbook .xlsx
Macro-enabled workbook .xlsm
Template .xltx
Macro-enabled template .xltm
Non-XML binary workbook .xlsb
Macro-enabled add-in .xlam
PowerPoint
XML file type Extension
Presentation .pptx
Macro-enabled presentation .pptm
Template .potx
Macro-enabled template .potm
Macro-enabled add-in .ppam
Show .ppsx
Macro-enabled show .ppsm
Slide .sldx
Macro-enabled slide .sldm
Office theme .thmx
Previously, users became familiar with most of the common Microsoft Office file extensions, with .doc, .xls, and .ppt being probably the three most known ones. With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft was trying to leave those well-known augmentations in the past and replace them with the new XML-based format that consists of 4-letter file extensions. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format which is both human-readable and machine-readable. The file extensions introduced in Office 2007 are still being used by the latest Microsoft Office 2010, 2013 and newer editions, but the older three letter ones are still widespread, as a lot of older documents are still available in that file format.
Securing your File Extension
By default, Windows hides file extensions from the user. Example, a photo named ‘Mango.docx’ will appear in My Documents or Windows Explorer as ‘Mango’ without the .docx extension. Internet attackers started using this to fool users into running a malicious program on their computer. File extensions ending with ‘.exe’ are actually programs.
How to View your File Extension
You can, however, avoid this, In the ‘Folder Options’ menu of any folder, select ‘View’ and uncheck the line labelled ‘Hide extensions for known file types’. File extensions will, thereafter, be displayed in full. You can, then, see what the file really is before deciding on whether or not to open it.
