File Types

Aloha!

Have you ever received an email from someone with an attachment that you couldn't open? Kind of frustrating, isn't it?

This problem used to occur quite often when people sent digital photo files to friends and family. They'd take a picture with their digital camera, and then use the software that came with the camera to edit the photo. Then they'd email the photo file.

Well, problem is, some of those photo editing programs create a unique type of file that is only readable with that program, instead of saving the file into a universal format, like JPEG/JPG. Universal file types - like JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) for photos, RTF (Rich Text Format) for word processing documents, and MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group 3 standard) for digital music - can be accessed whether you're using Windows, Mac, Linux, or even your mobile phone. Be conscientious and send universal file types by email to make it easy on the recipient.

PDF (Portable Document Format), the type of file Adobe Acrobat can access, is another common type of universal document. The wrinkle with PDF is that while you don't need the full version Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF - as there are other programs that can do it, like ones bundled with scanners - to modify the PDF file you will need the full version of Acrobat. Adobe Acrobat Reader can view the file, but not make changes to it.

Back to my initial point on not being able to open an email attachment: It may be that whoever sent the email used a program to create a file type that your computer cannot access because you don't have that program. You can either ask the person to recreate that file in a universal format, or you can download a reader program or converter that enables access. An example of this scenario entails the new MS Word .docx file format that Word 2007 creates by default. If you have MS Word 2007 and create a document, then send it by email, the recipient may not be able to open the attachment because they don't have MS Word 2007. They may have an older version of Word like 2003.

There are two simple ways to deal with this. One is to save the file as a traditional .doc format, which is the pre-MS Word 2007 format; otherwise, the recipient can install a "compatibility pack" created by Microsoft, which enables some older version of MS Word to read the .docx format.

Of course, unless the attachment is something important for work or personal reasons, you can always exercise the power of the delete command. That's always kind of fun, instead of getting frustrated. Zap! Goodbye email! Especially when much of the stuff we can't open is junk anyways.

Wishing you akamai computing!