{"id":5754,"date":"2008-06-30T15:36:50","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T14:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-open-unknown-file-types\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:29:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:29:42","slug":"how-to-open-unknown-file-types","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-open-unknown-file-types\/","title":{"rendered":"How to open unknown file types"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/06\/files03.jpg\" alt=\"How to open unknown file types\" align=\"right\" \/>Sometimes you may have a file on your computer but you don&#8217;t have the necessary application to open it, or Windows doesn&#8217;t know which one to use. These &#8220;unknown&#8221; files are easily noticeable as they don&#8217;t display any recognizable icon, but use a generic symbol instead.<\/p>\n<p>The trick to open this sort of file is really simple: double click on it as if you were going to launch it and Windows will display a message to ask you for\u00a0 the appropriate application to open the file. Choose the &#8220;<em>Select the program from a list<\/em>&#8221; option and click on OK. On the next Window, move along the list of available apps or click on the &#8220;<em>Browse<\/em>&#8221; button to find the program you want to open this file with. Once the program&#8217;s name is highlighted on the list, make sure the &#8220;<em>Always use the selected program to open this kind of file<\/em>&#8221; option is enabled and click on OK. Windows will automatically recognize the file type, and will use the application you&#8217;ve chosen to open it from now on.<\/p>\n<p>One last tip: if you ever want to change any current file association, right click on the file while holding the Shift key, and select &#8220;<em>Open with&#8230;<\/em>&#8221; in the context menu. This will bring up the program selection dialog again, enabling you to select another program with which to open those files from that moment on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes you may have a file on your computer but you don&#8217;t have the necessary application to open it, or Windows doesn&#8217;t know which one to use. These &#8220;unknown&#8221; files are easily noticeable as they don&#8217;t display any recognizable icon, but use a generic symbol instead. The trick to open this sort of file is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-open-unknown-file-types\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How to open unknown file types&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-5754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336015,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions\/336015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=5754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}