I recently asked for some information to be sent to me in zipped CSV format. Unfortunately, it has arrived as an attachment in DAT format. How do I read this information?
File type extensions are just a naming convention. Although they usually indicate the type of a file, they don't always. DAT is not a recognised file type. It is actually short for 'data', so this extension is commonly used as a generic file type for data files that could be in any format. We also suspect there may be an email program that has a habit of giving attachments a DAT file type, because we're often asked this question.
Whatever the explanation, we don't know what format the data is in. Try opening the saved attachment in Notepad. This will at least let you see if it is in comma-separated variables format. If so, you can just rename the file type to CSV. If not, you'll have to ask the sender what format it's supposed to be in. If it's supposed to be a ZIP file, rename it to ZIP instead, then unzip it.
|
Introduction | Applications
