cannot open DAT files

Question：I received a dat file thrugh windows mail , I cannot open it .My sender told me I could open it with OPEN OFFICE which I installed to no avail . Help welcome .

Answer 1：

Hi vovogolf,

Welcome to the Microsoft Answers Forum.

Usually .dat files can be open with Notepad or with Microsoft Word. Have you tried using any of these? Just save the .dat file to a destination of your choice and right click on it and click Open with and choose either notepad or Winword, if you only see the choice to just use Open when you right click if will ask you what you want to do just bubble the choice in for select a program.  If you prefer to use open office then you can select it as your program as well.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks,

James – Support Engineer

Answer 2：I selected Microsoft Word to open a dat file. It open it and it looks like machine language. I appears it was a gif file packaged and transmitted as a dat file. Outlook will not let me change the open program to a gif reader. It has assigned Microsoft Word to the file and not let me change it. How do I change the open file to a gif reader instead of Microsoft Word?