The Computer Club Newsletter

April  2003

By Ron Uncapher

The Tellico Village Computer User Club will hold its general meeting on Tuesday, May 6, 2003 at the Yacht Club. Please note that the meeting format is changing. The May meeting will be split into two sessions. As at the April meeting, a Basic Skills session will begin at 6:30 PM. Beginning with the May meeting it will continue until 7:30 PM. During this part of the meeting, there will be a short presentation by Ron Uncapher on the creation and organization of folders and files and downloading and saving files off the Internet. An open forum will follow the presentation, where members may ask questions on these or any other topic.

The second session will begin at 7:30 PM. The feature presentation will be "Creating a Multimedia Slide Show" by Pat Bolz. This topic will include a combination of Slides (photographs), Text and Music. Pat will advise us on various reasonably priced and easy to operate programs that are available to create such productions.

Recently, a friend asked me how to view email attachments that would not open. Usually, when you left click on an email attachment, the file will automatically open an application program, such as MSWORD, and the attachment appears in the workspace. The reason that this happens automatically is that an attachment, or file, is associated with a program that can view or create that type of file. There are many file types. For example, some of the most common text files types are MSWORD, the MSWORKS word processor, WORD PERFECT (another brand of word processor), ACROBAT and NOTEPAD. These and other file types are identified by an "association" designator, a three-character code that follows the file name and in WINDOWS by a unique program icon. The icon appears before the file names in you’re MY DOCUMENTS window. Graphics and picture file types are bitmap (.bmp), jpeg (.jpg), TIFF (.tif) and others (see GRAPHICS FORMATS in the Library of the TVCUC Website). There are nearly as many file type designators as there are application programs that create files. The WINDOWS operating system in your computer keeps track of the programs that have been loaded into your program and the file types that each program can handle. When a file arrives, either via email, internet download, floppy disk, or other data medium, WINDOWS checks the file type designator and associates the file to one of the programs on your computer that is able to handle it. Thus, when you double click on the file, the correct program is opened and you see the contents of the file.

So, what happens when WINDOWS cannot find an available program to associate with the file? It says, "I don’t know. What do your think?" and the "OPEN WITH" box appears. (You can view this box by right clicking on any file and choosing OPEN WITH/CHOOSE PROGRAM). What follows is my best answer to the question. This may apply to any unknown file. To start with, you must make a guess as to what type of file it is. First guess is that it is a text file of some sort. One of two programs come with every version of WINDOWS: "WRITE" or "WORDPAD". These programs are subsets of MSWORD. Scroll down the window of file types in the "OPEN WITH" box. Near the bottom (the types are listed alphabetically) you will find "WRITE" or "WORDPAD". Left click on the entry and then OK. If it is a text file of any type, WORDPAD will open and display the content of the file. What happens if this is not a text file? WORDPAD will probably open and display rows and rows of incomprehensible characters. It was not a text file! Back to the drawing board.

The second guess is that the mystery file is a picture of some sort. Remember, there are many types of picture or graphics files. Newer versions of WINDOWS have a utility program "IMAGE PREVIEW". Again, right click the file, click on "OPEN WITH/CHOOSE PROGRAM" and look for "IMAGE PREVIEW" in the "OPEN WITH" box. Select it and then OK. If "NO PREVIEW AVAILABLE" appears, or if you do not have "IMAGE PREVIEW", then go to the "OPEN WITH" box and look for "PAINT". "PAINT" is a windows graphics-editing program. It has limited capabilities, but it will open most types of graphic files and at least let you view the file.

Now, what if none of the above will let you view your file? Well, I don’t have all the answers and this space is too short to delve much further into the inner workings of WINDOWS. The best choice is contact the person who sent the file, and asks what program was used to create it.

I’ll close with this last word: Have you updated your antivirus software this week?

And don’t forget to check the TVCUC Website at www.tvcuc.org.