Computer Skills:
File Management (Page 3)

Naming Files & Folders

File Names

In older operating systems there used to be many restrictions when naming files. More recent Windows operating systems allow flexibility in choosing a name for a file.

A file name can contain up to 255 characters, including spaces. It's a good idea to avoid punctuation symbols. The following symbols cannot be used in file names:
colon ":", vertical bar "|", quotation mark """, slash "/", backslash "\", question mark "?", and asterisk "*".

Documents or data files are normally created within a specific application. For example,
if you start WordPad, type some text, and save the document, you will assign it a file name as you save the file.

Saving Homework.rtf in the CIS101 folder

In the figure above, a file named Homework.rtf is saved in the folder called CIS101.

File Name Extensions

Most applications automatically configure a file name extension. A file name extension usually consists of three or four characters. In the example above, WordPad automatically configured the rtf file name extension. It's usually a good idea to use the default file name extension configured by an application. Changing the file name extension can have unpredictable results — sometimes the file becomes unreadable.

The table below lists commonly used file types and file extensions.

File Type File Extension
Microsoft Word 2003 document .doc
Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 presentation .ppt
Microsoft Excel 2003 spreadsheet .xls
Microsoft Word 2007-2010 document .docx
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007-2010 presentation .pptx
Microsoft Excel 2007-2010 spreadsheet .xlsx
Microsoft Notepad text file .txt
Microsoft WordPad document .rtf
Adobe PDF document .pdf
Web pages .htm or .html
Images, photos, graphics .gif, .jpg, .png, .bmp
Audio files .mp3, .wav , .au, .midi

Continue with Page 4

Page 2