Some .rtf files have changed to files with no extension

Skymist

Hi Techies

I'm a bit perplexed!!!!

I use Word Pad, which gives the .rtf file extension, a lot. Today when I was placing my latest Word Pad document in it's relevant My Documents folder, I noticed that some older .rtf files there were no longer showing their usual icons, and when I tried opening one, was asked what I wanted to open it with, I naturally selected Word Pad. The icon reverted back to what it should be, and the file opened but just showed a load of gobbldygook :mad: . I also 'dropped and dragged' it into Notepad, but that just displayed the same gobbldygook!!! :mad::mad::mad:

I went through all of the files/folders in My Documents, My Music etc. ...anywhere I'd placed a .rtf file...and saw that some were now also displaying the 'files with no extensions' icon, yet a lot where also fine. These differences even occurred within the same folders!!! :think:

Well, I did a full avast boot scan, a full malwarebytes scan, and a full Spybot Search and Destroy scan....nada!!!! All clear! :T

Hunted around on Startpage for 'some .rtf files changed to file with no extension'....don't use Google any more.....more nada!!!

Any ideas, clues, suggestions, please...anything else I could/should try/do?

I haven't had any problems with this laptop....touch wood!! ..... since I bought it 2-3 years ago....it's an Acer Aspire 5741-A, running Windows 7 Home Premium.

TIA

S

Mr_Thrifty

Just go to a DOS prompt and "ren *.* *.rtf" to get the extensions back.

waddler_8

Whatever you do, DO NOT do the above.

Mr_Thrifty

It's fine, just make sure you're in the right directory first. Do "cd c:\pathname" to go to the right place.

victor2

Mr_Thrifty wrote: »

Just go to a DOS prompt and "ren *.* *.rtf" to get the extensions back.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
Almost as good as del *.*
(DO NOT do that either!)

Skymist

Sorry guys....but your advice is, to me, confusing and conflicting, and I don't know what either of you mean!!!!

I'm not a techie, but a self-taught silver surfer, and although I've been using a laptop with Windows (XP, Vista and now 7) for seven years now, I don't have any knowledge of the inner workings of the DOS prompt or directories, and don't have a clue what "ren *.* *.rtf" means!!! Also writing
"Whatever you do, DO NOT do the above" and "(DO NOT do that either!) " is not very helpful

Could you....or anyone else.....please give me some simple instructions that I can follow? Also will any solution need to be applied to each file seperately?

S

fwor

The advice other than the first reply is all good and consistent.

Mr Thrifty seems to have assumed that the directory only has .rtf files in it, but we don't know that from what you have said, so if you do what he suggests you may end up in more of a mess.

Something you need to be aware of: Wordpad can open and save more file types than just .rtf files. If you set Windows to "Hide known file extensions" all file types with associations that point to Wordpad will essentially look the same. But they might be .wri, .doc, .rtf, .txt and possibly a few other formats.

If something has removed the extensions, then Wordpad is likely to make a wrong assumption about the file type, and it will appear as gobbledygook.

So... can you confirm for sure that all the files you refer to were definitely Rich Text Format, or is it possible that some were .txt or .doc files?

Most of us here would prefer not to rush in with a hasty answer without knowing a bit more about the problem.

waddler_8

Nothing confusing about what I said. DO NOT follow thrifty's advice. It will mess things up even further.

"ren *.* *.rtf" will rename all files in the directory (folder), giving the extension .rtf

ren -> rename. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490987.aspx

Changes the name of a file or a set of files

Because the wildcard * has been used for both filename and extension (*.*), it will rename any filename with any extension within the directory to an .rtf file.

CMD defaults to %userprofile% unless you change directory.

Skymist

THANK YOU fwor :T

After carefully reading your post, and also recalling that I thought it was strange that only some of the icons of the .rtf files had changed (or so I thought) yet others seemed OK, I realised that the files that had changed were in fact the ones that I'd used my "Screen Grab" FF addon to capture, and so WERE NOT .rtf files but were in fact .jpeg files!!!! To check this out, I opened them with Firefox, and was able to verify this. So I've just tried renaming one to .jpeg and it's A OK!! :T

Still don't know what caused this to happen!!

Many thanks for all help given.

S

victor2

Glad you got it sorted. Apologies for the unhelpful comment. Was just shocked (and not the only one) that somebody could advise you to do something that would have caused you a lot more grief.