DORSET-L Archives

Archiver > DORSET > 1999-06 > 0928551985


From: Brian Tompkins <>
Subject: Re: Downloadable indexes
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 23:06:25 -0400


At 09:43 PM 6/4/1999 +0100, Deborah Waller wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>There are a variety of downloadable indexes on the web that I would really
>like to take a look at. Especially the Philimore marriages for Hampshire.
>Trouble is I have absolutely no idea how to read them once I've got them.
>
>I am always asked for a choice of programme to use to open the programme.
>If I chose Wordpad I get gobbledegook.
>
>How the hell do I do this?
>

Firstly it is very dangerous to open unknown files directly from the Web as
you never know what in the way of viruses could be hiding inside. My
advice is to always choose the save to disk option and then scan for
viruses before doing anything else. This especially true for Word (.DOC
extension) and Excel (.XLS extension) files.

However most of this data is supplied as compressed archive files. These
archive files contain one or more compressed files inside of them so you
will need to extract the data before you can read it. The most common
format of compressed archives available for the PC are ZIP files, (.ZIP)
extension. To extract the files from these you will need something like
PKZIP or QUICKZIP available from most shareware sites. Other type of
archive you are likely to encounter are ARJ files, (.ARJ extension), an old
DOS format and TAR files (.tar extension), which are normally produced
using the unix operating system, especially by academic institutions.

Once you have extracted the files the clue to which application you need is
the extension on the file name. Some of the more common are :-

.docMicrosoft Word
.xlsMicrosoft Excel
.mdbMicrosoft Access
,dbf DBase or Foxpro database, but can be read by Microsoft Access
.wk?Various versions of Lotus 123
.txtPlain Text readable by Worpad or Notepad
.rtfMicrosoft Rich text format, readable by wordpad

There are many other formats out there but this should help
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