List of File Types & Extensions

Below is a list of the commonly used file extensions.  This list was gathered from Wikipedia's  List of File Formats page. You can find a complete list of file types and extensions there.


Archive and compressed

The most common compression files to the standard user are .zip and .rar. However, there are many more.

  • 7z 7-Zip compressed file
  • ALZ - Alzip format
  • cab - Microsoft Cabinet
  • deb - Debian Linux install package
  • gzip (.gz) - Compressed file
  • jar - ZIP file with manifest for use with Java applications.
  • RAR Rar Archive (.rar), for multiple file archive (rar to .r01-.r99 to s01 and so on)
  • sit - StuffIt (Macintosh)
  • tar
  • .tar.gz, .tgz (gzipped tar file)
  • zip

Database

  • DB - Paradox
  • DBF - DBase, DBase III/IV/V, Microsoft FoxPro
  • FRM - MySQL table definition
  • MDB - Microsoft Database (Access)
  • MFD - Microsoft SQL Server Database
  • MYD - MySQL MyISAM table data
  • MYI - MySQL MyISAM table index
  • NSF - Lotus Notes database
  • NTF - Lotus Notes database design template
  • ODB - OpenDocument database
  • SQL - bundled SQL queries
  • WDB - Microsoft Works Database

Document

These files store formatted text.

Font file


Graphics

Raster graphics

Raster (or Bitmap) files store images as a group of pixels.


Page description language

Presentation

Script


Sound and music

Lossless audio

Lossy audio

Other music formats

  • VGM - (stands for "Video Game Music", log for several different chips)
  • PSF - Portable Sound Format
  • NSF - (bytecode program to play NES music)
  • MP3 - MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3
  • MOD - (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
  • PSF - PlayStation sound format.

Playlist formats


Spreadsheet

Tabulated data

Video

Main article: video file formats.
  • 3GP - the most common video format for cell phones
  • GIF - Animated GIF(simple animation; until recently often avoided because of patent problems)
  • ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common. Video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
  • AVI - (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
  • FLV (*.flv) A video file encoded to run in a flash animation.
  • M1V MPEG-1 Video file
  • M2V MPEG-2 Video file
  • SWF - Macromedia Flash (.swf for viewing,
  • FLA - Macromedia Flash for producing) (
  • MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
  • MOV (QuickTime, a container format, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is the most common)
  • MPEG (.mpeg, .mpg, .mpe)
  • NSV Nullsoft Streaming Video is a media container designed for streaming video content over the internet.
  • RM - RealMedia
  • Xvid

Video Editing & Production formats

Webpage

  • Static
    • HTML - (.html, .htm) - HyperText Markup Language
    • XHTML - (.xhtml, .xht) - eXtensible HyperText Markup Language
    • XML - (.xml)
    • MHTML - (.mht, .mhtml) - Archived HTML, store all data on one web page (text, images, etc) in one big file
  • Dynamically generated
    • ASP - (.asp) - Microsoft Active Server Page
    • ASPX - (.aspx) - Microsoft Active Server Page. NET
    • ADP - AOLserver Dynamic Page
    • BML - (.bml) - Better Markup Language (templating)
    • CFM - (.cfm) - ColdFusion
    • CGI - (.cgi)
    • JSP - (.jsp) JavaServer Pages
    • Lasso - (.las, .lasso, .lassoapp)
    • PL - Perl (.pl)
    • PHP - (.php, .php?, .phtml) - ? is version number (previously abbreviated Personal Home Page, later changed to PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor)
    • SSI - (.shtml) - HTML with Server Side Includes

XML, markup language and other web standards-based file formats

  • EML - (.eml) - File format used by several desktop email clients
  • RSS - (.rss, .xml) - Syndication file format
  • Atom - (.atom, .xml) - Another syndication file format