How to Change File Type in Windows 10

With our increasing use of computers in our daily life, it may get necessary even for a simple user to change the file type of a file from one format to another. Each file format has their own properties. For example a ‘.txt’ file will probably get opened by the text editor while an ‘html’ file will get launched in your default browser.

File format analogy

Even though the contents inside the files might be the same, the file type matters a lot. The process of changing file type is quite simple and straightforward. However, there are some cases whereby changing the file type, the file becomes unusable. Hence it is recommended that you know exactly what you’re doing and also make an additional copy of the file.

Showing file extensions and changing the file format

By default, Windows doesn’t have the file format displayed alongside every file. For example, if a file is a text file, its name wouldn’t display ‘ap puals.txt’. Instead, it will only display ‘appuals’. First, we will enable the file extensions and then through basic rename, we will change the file extension. You can also choose to rename files in bulk if there are a lot of files that you need to change the type for.

1. Press Windows + E, click View from the top-most ribbon. Now click Options and select the option Change folder and search options.

Change folder and search options – Windows Explorer

1. Now uncheck the option Hide extensions for known file types. Now all the files will have their file extensions displayed alongside their names.

Enabling File Extensions – Windows Explorer

1. Now navigate to the file for which you want to change the file format. Right-click on it and select Rename.
2. Now change the file’s extension to the extension of the type which you want to change into. In this example, we change a ‘text’ file to a ‘python’ file. The extensions for a text file are ‘txt’ and for python ‘py’.

Process of changing a file type

Here is a list of common file extensions used in the world of computing. We have listed them according to their type.

How to Change a File Extension in Windows

This page shows you how to change a file extension in Windows. For example, you might want to rename a file called MyDocument.rtf to MyDocument.txt .
These instructions are for Windows 7 but the same basic process applies to most versions of Windows (see screenshots from Windows XP).

NOTE: Changing a file extension should only be done if you are confident it’s the right thing to do. Test the file thoroughly after the change. If it doesn’t work you can easily change the extension back—just make sure you remember what it was!

My Computer

The first thing to do is open Windows Explorer (or My Computer) and view the file you wish to change. We’ll use the example of MyDocument.rtf . When we browse to the file it looks like this:

You’ll notice that the file does not appear to have an extension—it’s just called MyDocument . That’s because in this example Windows is set to hide extension names.

If you can already see file extensions on your computer, skip the next step.

If you can’t see the file extension, go to organize > Folder and Search Options , then click the View tab. Uncheck the box titled «Hide extensions for known file types» like so:

Click OK . Now you should be able to see the file extension:

Right-click the file name and select Rename (or left-click and hold down the button for one second). Enter the new extension like so:

After entering the new extension, hit the Enter (return) key. Windows will give you a warning that the file may not work properly. This is quite safe—remember that you can restore the original extension if anything goes wrong.

It’s also possible that you might get another message telling you that the file is «read-only». In this case either say yes to turning off read-only, or right-click the file, select Properties and uncheck the Read-only box.

If you do not have permission to change the file extension, you may have to login as Administrator. Another option is to make a copy of the file, rename the copy and then delete the original.

How to change a File Extension in Windows

This article outlines how to change a file extension in Windows. For example, you might want to rename a TURF file called MCALL_0110_4865_6500_2074._ip to MCALL_0110_4865_6500_2074.zip

These instructions are for Windows 7 but the same basic process applies to most versions of Windows.

By default, Windows hides file extensions. In order to change them, you must first unhide file extension to make them visible so they can me changed. Then you can change it.

If you can already see file extensions on your computer, skip to Step 2

How to show file extensions in Windows 7

Step 1: If you can’t see the file extension, Open Windows Explorer and click on the Organize button towards the top left. Then choose Folder and Search Options, then click the View tab. Uncheck the box titled «Hide extensions for known file types» like so:

Click OK. Now you should be able to see the file extension.

How to show file extensions in Windows 8

Step 1: It’s simple to turn file extensions on and off in Windows 8. Simply open a File Explorer window (the new name for Windows Explorer) and click the View tab.

Now check the box next to File name extensions. If the box is check, extensions will be shown. If unchecked, they won’t. This is the opposite way the tickbox works in Windows 7 and Vista.

How to show file extensions in Windows 10

Step 1: Open the File Explorer by clicking on the Windows Start button and selecting the File Explorer icon as shown below.

Click the View tab in File Explorer and then click the Options button (or click the drop down menu and click Change folder and search options) as shown below.

The Folder Options dialog box is displayed. Click the View tab at the top of Folder Options as shown below

To view file extensions, uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types option.

Click OK when done.

Step 2: Right-click the file name and select Rename (or left-click and hold down the button for one second). Enter the new extension like so:

After entering the new extension hit the Enter (return) key. Windows will give you a warning that the file may not work properly. This is quite safe—remember that you can restore the original extension if anything goes wrong.

It’s also possible that you might get another message telling you that the file is «read-only». In this case either say yes to turning off read-only or right-click the file, select Properties and uncheck the Read-only box.

If you do not have permission to change the file extension, you may have to log in as Administrator. Another option is to make a copy of the file, rename the copy and then delete the original.

How To Change File Type / Extension In Windows 7

As a web developer, i frequently change file type and/or extensions. for example, changing an HTML document to PHP or changing an image from JPG to PNG. this i simply by changing the file extension.
Say i want to change an HTML file with name “index.html” to a PHP file, all i need to do is rename it to “index.php” . same goes for changing a JPG to PNG, Doc to TXT e.t.c.

By default file extensions are conspicuously excluded from file names making the changing of file types via extension renaming impossible.
To enable visibility of the file extension in file’s name, follow the steps below;

1. Open your windows file explorer, navigate to any folder, for example “My document”
2. Click on the Organize tab at the top left corner then Folder and search options.
3. On the “View tab” uncheck Hide extensions for known file types, Click the Apply then OK button.
   
4. Now that file extension is now visible and included with file names, you can now change file from one type or form to another by changing the extension.

How to Change the Icon for a File Type in Windows?

It’s surprising that Windows doesn’t have a built-in option to allow users to set custom icons for file types. If you have a custom file type and the corresponding program doesn’t have a nice-looking icon in its .exe or .dll resource, you can change or customize the default icon for that file type manually.

This article explains how to change the default icon for a file type using different methods in Windows. Instructions apply to all versions of Windows, including Windows 10

How to Change the Default Icon for a File Type?

You can change the default icon for a file type using the built-in Registry Editor. In the second method, let’s see how to change the default icon using Default Programs Editor.

Method 1: Change file type icon using the Registry Editor

Let’s assume you want to change the file type icon for .txt files, and here is how to do that.

1. Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following branch:
3. In the right-pane, note down the value data for Progid (e.g. txtfile ). This is the user chosen (via Default Programs or Open with dialog) Programmatic Identifier for the file extension.

Registry Branch Not Found?

If the DefaultIcon key does not exist by default, you need to create it manually.

In the right-pane, double-click (default) and mention the path to your custom icon (.ico file or reference to a icon inside a EXE/DLL file. See “Icons From DLL/EXE Files” paragraph at the end of this article).

Edit the (default) value data, mentioning the path to a icon file. For this example, I used a notepad icon file from the web, saved it to a permanent location and mentioned the full path.If you’re using a custom icon file, make sure it’s at least 128 x 128, although it’s not a rule but this is to make sure icons look nice when folder view is set to large or extra large icons.

Exit the Registry Editor.

Logoff and login back, or refresh the icons and see if the Text file icons are now updated.

Icons From DLL/EXE Files

If you don’t have a custom .ico file, you may use the icon picker dialog box to choose an icon from a EXE/DLL file. To launch the icon picker dialog, right-click on a folder in your system, click Properties. Click the Customize tab, and click Change Icon… button. Use the icon picker to choose the icon and make a note of the index. The index starts from “0” and you need to proceed vertically when counting (top to bottom.)

Browse to shell32.dll or imageres.dll and note down the icon index, simply cancel the icon picker dialog and close folder properties dialog.

For example, to set the 260 th icon in Shell32.dll, mention the following path, in Step 8:

To make it clear, this procedure doesn’t change the file type associations, only the icon assigned to that file type. If the icons don’t update even if you restart Windows, clear and rebuild the icon cache.

Additional note

As the icon change is made to the ProgId txtfile in the registry, it also affects the other file extensions that use the same ProgId. For instance, in my system, the txtfile ProgID is being used by .log , .scp & .wtx file extensions. Those files will also show up with the new icon.

To know which file extensions are using a ProgID (i.e., txtfile), run this command in the Command Prompt window:

RELATED: See article How to Remove File Type Associations Using the Registry Editor for more information on File extension → ProgID mapping.

It’s possible to change the default icon for a file type without affecting other file types. To do that, you’ll need to create a new file class or ProgID for the file extension, and assign the default icon in the newly created file class.

Method 2: Change file type icon using Default Programs Editor

Don’t want to edit the registry to change file type icons? There are 3rd party tools like Default Programs Editor and FileTypesMan that can change the file type icons and association settings.

Default Programs Editor is a very useful tool which helps you to edit file type associations, add or remove AutoPlay handlers and static context menu entries. We’ve covered Default Programs Editor before. Default Programs Editor – A Useful File Association Editor for Windows

In this method, let us see how you can accomplish the task using the Default Programs Editor.

1. Download Default Programs Editor, unzip and run the executable.
2. Select File Type Settings
3. Click Icon
4. Select the file extension for which you want to change the icon, in the next screen.
5. This screen shows the current icon for the file type. To change it, click on the Browse button.
6. In the icon picker dialog that’s displayed, browse and locate an icon, or point to a custom .ico file if you have one. The built-in imageres.dll and shell32.dll files contain many icons for you to choose from.
7. Click the Save Icon button to save the changes to the registry.

As you can see in the screenshot, you also have the option to save the settings to a file. In case you need to apply the changes to several computers, you can output the settings to a .REG file. This can be done by clicking the arrow mark near the Save Icon button, and choosing Save to .reg file. You can deploy or apply the .reg file on other computers without having to run the utility again.

That’s it! The default icon for .txt file type is changed would now refresh or update automatically!

[Before] .txt files showing standard icons [After] .txt files showing custom icons

Method 3: Change file type icon using FileTypesMan

FileTypesMan is an alternative to the Folder Options “File Types” tab (XP-era) in Windows. It displays the list of all file extensions and types registered on your computer. For each file type, the following information is displayed: Type Name, Description, MIME Type, Perceived Type, Flags, Browser Flags, and more. FileTypesMan also allows you to easily edit the properties and flags of each file type, as well as it allows you to add, edit, and remove actions in a file type. This utility works in all Windows versions including, Windows 10.

Screenshots

%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-102 is the Windows-default icon for .txt files. Windows-default icon for .txt files

After setting the default icon to %SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,14 via the icon picker dialog, here is how it shows up: Customized .txt files icon

Change the icon for unknown and extensionless files

File types that are not registered with the system and files that have no extension are assigned a generic icon from shell32.dll,0 by default. The unknown or generic icon for unregistered file types and extensionless files can be customized as per your choice so that you don’t have to see the boring icon anymore.

Windows stores the icon setting for unknown file types and extensionless files in this registry key:

The (default) or the unnamed value points to the following icon resource by default:

Using the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe), you can change the (default) value so that it points to a .ico file that you already have or an icon resource inside a .dll or .exe file by mentioning the file name and resource identifier.

Using the Icon picker (a.k.a. the Change Icon dialog), you can use a relevant icon in shell32.dll, 224 that can be assigned for unregistered and extensionless files. You just need to replace the existing Value data ( %SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll,0 ) with %SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll,224 using the Registry Editor or using the REG files below.

Logoff and login back to your account.

Here is how it looked before:

We’ve changed that to:

Tip: In case the icons don’t automatically refresh even after a logoff-logon cycle, you can force a shell icons refresh using the ie4uinit.exe method or using Default Programs.

Hope the above guide helped you change file type icons on your Windows 10 computer easily!