Bobby: Hey John, I don't know how to open this file.

John: Whats its filetype?

Bobby: Errr... How to I find it?

John: So Bobby, you don't know how to find what type of file it is. Alright let me teach you. Whats its extension say?

Bobby:Ok... What is an extension?

John: Its the set of characters that you find after the last dot in the filename. Say for example the filename is "hello.html", the "html" after the '.' is called extension.

Bobby: Ok. So the extension of my file is "docx".

John: So do you know what docx means?

Bobby: No.

John: Alright, so what we have to do now is find out how more about that file type. So what you can do is go to some websites which list all the filetypes and their description. Say for example.

http://filext.com/

http://www.file-extensions.org/

http://www.fileinfo.com/

etc are some such websites.

Bobby: Ok. Let me see I go into http://filext.com/. and search for it. Alright. I see the details of the docx filetype. It says its Word Microsoft Office XML Format. But ya we do have Word isn't it? Then why aren't we able to open this one. Oh. Wait a minute. I got it I got it. It says here.

"This is the new format for Microsoft Office documents (2007)."

But ours is 2003. So thats the issue. Now I need Office 2007 to open this file. Ok.

John: Your absolutely right Bobby. Thats what you need now. Now I hope that you know how to do it.

Bobby: Yes John, I know I know. Thanks alright.

John: Any time.

Bobby: But John, How do I open it?

John: Oh Bobby, u can either double click on the file, or right click and select open in the pop-up menu.