How do I open .DAT file?

DAT files can be mighty confusing to deal with. For one thing, these files are data files. As such, these can contain many types of data. You can have DAT files containing binary data, as in PC games, software packages and system files. These can be video files as well. For instance, if you explore the contents of a video CD using Windows Explorer, you will find that the movie file you played was a DAT file.

These are the simple cases, where you know the source of the file and can figure out which application will be able to open it. However, things will be a little different, and a whole lot more complex when you do not know the source of a DAT file. Let us suppose you receive a DAT file from your friend in an e-mail. How will you know what type of a file it was? One solution would be to ask your friend which application was used to create this file, but if that is not known even to him/ her, then you will be in a bit of trouble.

Guessing the correct application that will open a DAT file of unknown origin can be a bit tricky. If you do not know the source application that created the file, you can try the following approach:

1. Right click on the file and choose “Open”.
2. In the box that pops up, select the option “Open With”. This box may or may not appear. If it doesn’t, then follow the instructions from Step 3 onwards.
3. In the next box, select the option “Select the program from a list”.
4. Click on OK.
5. In the next window, select the program which you think will open the file. Just make a guess. The safest option is notepad. Do not check the box which says, “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.”
6. Click on Open.

Notepad will open almost any file. Once the file is open, look through it. There is a chance that you will find a lot of garbage characters and garbled text in it and not much more. Still, you can try to guess the type of the file from the characters that you are able to see.

If you still cannot figure out the type of the file, then keep on trying with the multimedia, word processing and office applications installed in your PC. One of those should be open the file. Follow the process described above.