Viewing those file extensions on Windows

I'm clearly not a Windows user. Still, don't laugh. I can never remember how to view extensions, and I just don't trust Windows to put the extensions that I want on my files. I've just upgraded to Windows XP and while I thought this might be a help to some of you, I know I'll come back to it another day when once again I can't see those dumb things.

Why might you want to view your file extensions? Well, sometimes Windows programs add their own extensions to your files. If you think you're creating an html file with the extension .html but Windows (or WordPad, or whatever) is actually creating a file called "example.html.txt" it just won't work the same way in your browser. In fact, it won't work at all.

To view your file extensions in Windows XP
1. Click on the Start menu and choose Control Panel.
2. If you're looking at Categories, click on Appearances and Themes. If you're already looking at the individual control panels, click on Folder Options.
3. Those of you who clicked Appearances and Themes in the previous step should now see the Folder Options control panel. Click it.
4. Click on the View tab in the Folder Options window.
5. Finally, uncheck the box next to Hide extensions for known file types.


6. Click OK to close the box and now when you go to the Desktop, you'll be able to see if you've got the right extension going.

Now I remember why I can never find that rather hidden option.

Hope this was helpful.