What is a .Dat file? How to read .Dat file on computer?

If you are a regular computer user, you will probably come across files with the .DAT extension many times. So what is a .DAT file? and how to read the .DAT file on the computer? The following article will help you answer this question.

Have you ever received an Email with an attachment with the extension .DAT. You do not know what file this is and how to open this .DAT file? Of course, don’t worry too much because you’re not the only one having trouble in this situation. This is a problem that Emergenceingames.com has received requests for answers from many readers. To answer these questions, we will learn through the article about the .DAT file and how to read the .DAT file.

1. Concept What is a .DAT file?The .DAT extension represents a file containing raw data. That means it is not associated with any particular program or application. When you see a file with the .XLS extension you know it’s an Excel file. Or files with the extension .avi, .wmv, .mp3… are files that contain video data, so to open these files we will use music playback applications such as Windows Media Player or Windows Media Player. VLC… However, with the .DAT file, the Windows operating system will not know what program the file needs to be opened with and will ask you to choose a program to open the file.

2. Why is the .DAT file created on the system?Usually each file creation program must provide a file extension. However, in some cases, the program will not provide this extension, but only provide the .DAT extension for the file. Technically this won’t damage the files, but opening the file will be more difficult because your Windows computer won’t know how to open the .DAT file.

3. Some examples using the .DAT . file– VCD files (video CD files): These files are named with the extension .DAT. Because the video files do not support the user to open them directly, the user only insert the VCD into the drive and the device will read the files. When the user copies these files from the VCD to the computer, the computer will not know how to open this .DAT file.

– Email sending programs: For example, MS Outlook, this mailing program renames attachments with the extension .DAT

– In some cases, the .dat file also contains plain text data if it was generated by a data export program (such as statistics programs).

4. How to read the .DAT file on the computerThe best way to open a file. DAT is to use the program that created it. Sounds funny, right? So how to know the program created ? Try the following ways:

Method 1: Use Notepad to open the .DAT . fileYou should know that Notepad can open any file, even image or video files, and display them as text. Most files opened this way will display a jumbled string of characters, but in some cases you will find some useful information. This is because even videos, images, etc. will have some part of the file that is text containing information about the file. For example, I open a video using Notepad

How To: You open Notepad and click on the menu File then select item Open

In the file type selection you choose All files and find the path containing the file to open then press the . button Open

As you can see in the image on Notepad only shows the string and doesn’t tell you what type of file it is. However, if you notice the text at the top of the text, we can find out and immediately guess that this is a video file so we will use specialized music software to open it.

Method 2: Open .DAT file with Hex Editor

Hex Editor

is an application that can display any file in Hexadecimal (hexadecimal) format making it easy to determine which file format and program to open.

How to use is very simple, you just need to download the software here. Extract and run the file XVI32.exe. On the application interface, to open a file, click Open and find the path to the file to open.

In this example we will open an image file, the application will show you it is a file with .PDF extension format.

Method 3: Open the .DAT file with Open With If you still cannot determine the .DAT file type with Notepad or the Hex Editor application we can try to open it by right clicking on the file and selecting the item. Open With.

Windows will provide a list of applications to open the file, but we do not know exactly which applications can be opened so we can use the file size check to make a guess:

– You right click on the file and select Properties Check file size. If the file is large (like hundreds of MB) it is likely a video file so you can try opening it with music applications.

– If the file size is between 5 – 15MB, it is probably an audio file. You can also try opening it with a music player like Windows Media Player or VLC Player…

– If you have received .DAT files from a VCD, it is likely that the files will be opened in a video player application

– In case you receive files via Email or download from the Internet this will potentially contain viruses or malware. It is advised that you do not open any such files if the Email you receive is not from a trusted person. To be more sure you should use a virus scanner before opening this file.

https://thuthuat.Emergenceingames.com/file-dat-la-gi-doc-file-dat-tren-may-tinh-nhu-nao-12480n.aspx
Above is an introductory article about .DAT files and how to read .DAT files. In addition, you can refer to the article Summary of file reading programs. Data on the computer. Hopefully after reading the article you will find the best way to read your .DAT file. Good luck.