

It can also play back a fairly wide range of multimedia formats, including Adobe Flash videos, though note that it is actually using your built-in browser plugins and media player codecs to render media files so if you can’t already open it, chances are Universal Viewer won’t be able to either. It can display large PSD files quickly, as well as a wide variety of other image formats, including less common ones that you might not normally have a viewer for. This free viewer is available in portable and installable forms, and can display a wide variety of documents and files.


If so, then Universal Viewer is a great tool that you can use to see the file itself. When you need to view a file itself, looking at it in code form sometimes doesn’t cut it. View Almost Any File With Universal Viewer You may even find the info you’re looking for without having to open it in a full viewer, depending on what you’re needing to find. Many files will be even less human-readable, but you can still often find clues as to what program was used to create the file or at least what program it was associated with. Information about File Formats from Wikipedia Wikipedia is another good source of information about file formats, though often you’ll find more info about the format’s history and technical issues than how to actually use it.Ĭheck File Format Information on offers information on a wide range of file formats, and includes a very extensive list of applications that can view, create, or edit that file format, so we recommend checking there first. Make sure you can see the file extension, then search for the extension on your favorite search engine or a dedicated site such as. So, if the first site from Microsoft doesn’t show much info, click the Search the web link near the bottom to quickly see the file extension info on Bing.Īlternately, you can manually search for information about a file type.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft’s own Bing search often offers more information about specific file types than Microsoft’s dedicated file info search. Microsoft’s own web service is notoriously bad at giving useful information about file formats, so if you choose to use the web service to find the correct program, you’ll often not find any information.
