what program opens files with the extension .dat?

Question

it does not open with microsoft word nor adobe acrobat reader.

Answer 1

It's a generic extension used by many many different programs to save data. Generally it's data that you won't need to open like you would a document.

You can ignore most of the folks here telling you it's one particular thing or another, unless it's in the context of a particular application, but remember it varies with the application. It's true some viruses store data as .dat files, and you should probably be careful in case the virus sets itself up as the associated program or sets up .dat as an executable extension. Don't automatically assume they're viruses, though.

Answer 2

Dat Extension

Answer 3

well, it depends on the file. If it's an index.dat file, DON'T OPEN IT! It's a data miner! (steals personal info)

some .dat applications are part of security programs, but you shouldn't need to open the file in the first place. They are more functions than something to read.

Some are data files that aren't necessarily opened with a program, but with a database handler. For example, a mail merge using data from excel would store the configuration of the data as a .dat file, but not necessarily show the data itself.

Answer 4

Since ".dat" is a common extension, it may be utilized by different programs. It really depends on the file itself.

Answer 5

Received a .dat file, but aren’t sure how to open it? .Dat files are not associated with any specific program, making the process of opening them a little bit trickier

Answer 6

That's because .dat files are program files that tell the program how to run. There are no programs that can open them.

Answer 7

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That extension is too generic to have a specific program to be associated with it. If you knew what sort of data may be contained within we may have better ideas.

Answer 8

If you receive an email with an extension not recognized, it defaults to dat extension.

Have a look here for more: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q166439/

Answer 9

it depends. if it contains text in that file, you can simply open it using notepad or wordpad. if it's a movie, you can open it using windows media player or xingmpeg player. knowing the contents of the file is critical because it sometimes can damage the file.

Answer 10

This is a generic data file that is used by a software program. You cannot open a .dat file by itself. Some viruses dump .dat files onto your harddrive, so I hope you virus scanned this particular .dat file before you tried to open it.