If you have a .DAT file on your PC or some person has emailed you a file with extension .DAT then this article will tell you exactly what to do with that .DAT file and how can you open .DAT files. Some of you shall know this, but I have been asked these questions about .DAT file number of times.
The .DAT file has arbitrary data, and it is not to be associated with a particular application or program. Like, we know a .XLS file will always be an excel file, but in case of.DAT file we cannot be sure and there are numbers of different programs that may open. DAT file.
One of best ways to open a .DAT file is by a program that has created it. So, it is damn easy when you know which program has created the extension. However, what if you do not know, how will you figure it out? We have few ways to do it. The foremost action that can be done is opening the file in Notepad. The Notepad application can open anything, any file extension you throw at it, it displays everything as text, even video files, and images.
Mostly text on a Notepad of a file format you have opened may be nonsense, but sometimes you will find information that is useful. This information can be supportive and can tell a lot from the name of the file or the software program that can be used to make that type of file.
Opening a file in Notepad is a bit different, and you need to select ‘All Files’ while opening. If you open a video file in Notepad, it might take some time but you will find useful info in that.
It will not tell you the exact info about file type, but you may come to know about a company name like Microsoft if that file is a video file made in Windows Media Player.
Alternatively you can install a hex editor that can video view the hex code and can tell you more accurately about that data. This method will be more accurate for finding the original file type.
Usually speaking DAT files are nowadays only received via email attachments and programmer use this file type more often.
Another small but fundamental question can be asked via the sender of that file, about which program did they handle to create the file.
It can also happen that file is sending an image or document the file extension got changed due to email routing. If that is the trouble then you would know you can just change the extension and hence file will open. Like saving .DAT file to an extension of JPG or GIF or PNG and if they say it was a document then you can try changing the extension to .doc, .docx, etc.
The next way to open a .DAT file is by applying brute force attack which means try opening the .DAT file in as many programs you have on your PC. For experimental purposes, you can convert an .XLS file to .DAT and try opening that in Excel sheet. You will see that .DAT will open in Excel like a .XLS file do.
VLC is another program that you try opening a .DAT file with. VLC can open both a music, video and photo file altogether and can be useful in many cases.
I hope the above methods will be enough, and you will be able to open your ambiguous .DAT file. Let us know, if either of these techniques did not work for you. We can try and help.