It's the 21st century; do you know what's in your email box? There's a dirty little secret in cyberspace and it's
that more people than not -- even people who should know better -- don't know how to handle a lot of the
attachments they receive with their mail. If it doesn't say .doc, .gif, .jpg or .zip (on a PC) and .sit (on a Mac),
they freak. Dealing with an .xls, .tga or .mp3 is easier than you think. So, the next time you get a mysterious
attachment in your mailbox, stay calm, and consult the little DLT cheat sheet.
The Basics What most users don't seem to realize is that Mac
and PC compression programs are now cross-platform. If you're on a PC
and get an attachment with a .sit extension on the file name that means
it's a file compressed using the popular Mac utility program called
StuffIt. WinZip and other .zip compression/decompression programs for
the PC can decompress these files, and as long as the files they contain
are PC-friendly documents, you can open them as you would any other
PC files. If you're using a Mac and get a .zip attachment, StuffIt (which
comes with most Internet services, Web browsers, etc.) will open these
compressed documents without a hitch.
Tip: If you're sending documents from one computer type to another,
it's a good idea to add the appropriate three-letter file extension
to the documents. If you send a Microsoft Word .doc file from a Mac
to a PC without the .doc, the person on the other end may have trouble
opening it. On the receiving end, if you have trouble opening a file
by double-clicking on it, try opening up the application it was created
in and then opening the document from there.
Multimedia Files Besides word processing documents, most of
what you get in attachments are graphics and audio files. Most every
graphic format (.gif, .jpg, .tga, .png, .bmp) can be opened (on either
a Mac or PC) with an image-processing program such as Photoshop. Multimedia
players, such as the Microsoft Media Player (which comes with both Mac
and PC versions of Internet Explorer) can handle both video formats
(.mpg, .avi, .qt, and .mov), as well as many popular audio formats (.mpg,
mp3, .ram).
Tip: If you get a file attachment and you're not sure what it is,
try opening it in your decompression program, Photoshop, MS Media Player
and MS Word. One of these programs will likely do the trick.
Other Formats Here are a few other file formats you may encounter
and what to do with them:
|
File
Extension
|
What
is it?
|
How
to Open (PC)
|
How
to Open (Mac)
|
|
.pdf
|
Page Definition Format. A cross-platform format for viewing
word/image documents
|
Use the .pdf viewer, Adode Acrobat, available for free at
Adobe
|
Use the .pdf viewer, Adode Acrobat, available for free at Adobe,
|
|
.dcr, .dir, .dxr, .swf
|
Director or Shockwave animation file
|
Simply drag the file onto a Web browser window and it will
launch (as long as you have the appropriate plug-in).
|
Simply drag the file onto a Web browser window and it will
launch (as long as you have the appropriate plug-in).
|
|
.hqx
|
Bin-Hex, a Mac binary compression format
|
Use WinZip or other .zip decompression program.
|
Use StuffIt or StuffIt Expander.
|
|
.sea
|
A self-extracting Mac-formatted compression file
|
Use a .zip decompression program.
|
Simply double-click it.
|
|
.rtf, .rtx
|
Rich Text Format
|
Open through your word processing program.
|
Open through your word processing program.
|
|
.xls, .xll
|
Microsoft Excel
|
Open in MS Excel, in another spreadsheet program, or in MS
Word.
|
Open in MS Excel, in another spreadsheet program, or in MS
Word.
|
|
.pcd
|
Kodak PhotoCD image
|
Open in graphics program.
|
Open in graphics program.
|
|
.exe
|
Executable PC program
|
Double-click to launch it.
|
This is a PC program that you can't run unless you have Windows
emulation software installed.
|
See also:
|
