# Why are my old essays mp3s? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 21, 2000, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965 "2000-09-21T05:11:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![socpro69](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@socpro69](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/socpro69)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2000, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965/1 "2000-09-21T05:11:13Z")
I was going through a box of old floppies last night trying to figure out what labels I should have stuck on them at whatever point over the past 3 or 4 years. Anyway, to make a shortish story brief, all of the files that were once my old term papers, resumes and exams came up as mp3s. Most of these were written on either Wordperfect 4.5 or Corel Wordperfect Suite 7. Neither of these programs are on my computer now. Does anyone out there know… well not so much how I can change them to text files - I have access to other machines with these programs on them so I can make the changes there - but why my machine, who is usually friendly and eager to cooperate, would do this? ---
**Author:** ![Kupek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90db22/32.png) [@Kupek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kupek)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2000, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965/2 "2000-09-21T05:46:37Z")
Chances are just the file extension got changed. Rename them to file.[xxx] where [xxx] is the file extension associated with the program you originaly created them with. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2000, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965/3 "2000-09-21T07:48:56Z")
what is the DOS file extension? It could be the file extension has not changed, just that windows interprets it that way. I had this happen with .scr which used to be for scripts and now win95 uses it for screensavers so I had to rename my scripts to something else. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2000, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965/4 "2000-09-21T10:08:14Z")
Windows associates filename extentions with programs. But since the extention is only three characters long, there are some conflicts, with different software using the same extention. Chances are, when you installed your MP3 player, it registered a bunch of file extentions for itself. When I installed WinAmp, I noticed it grabbed **.mod** files which I’d been using for SPICE model files. No big deal, really - it just means that when I double-click on a **.mod** file, WinAmp starts up and tries to read the file, fail, and give an error message. I can still open it from SPICE correctly. If you are curious, open Explorer, go to Display -\> Folder Options -\> File Types (I think - I don’t have an English version of Windows right now). That’s where Windows keeps track of most - but, I think, not all - the file associations. Also, somewhere in the Options dialogue there is a checkbox for “Do not display associated file extentions” or something like that. You might want to uncheck this - that would allow you to see exactly what the file extention of those “MP3” files are. ---
**Author:** ![Kupek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90db22/32.png) [@Kupek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kupek)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2000, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965/5 "2000-09-21T21:42:37Z")
Ah yes, I forgot that most people opt to hide their file extensions in Windows. **scr4** probably got it. The file extensions probably haven’t even changed, that particular extension has just been reassociated. Try opening up the files in your program of choice and see what happens. (Open the program, then go to File, Open, blah blah blah, not double clicking on the file.) ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2000, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-my-old-essays-mp3s/33965/6 "2000-09-22T03:24:07Z")
Yes, unhide the file extensions! I got a helpdesk call a while back about a user’s drive with three (or sometimes four) files of the “same name”. He was confused, and so was I until I interrogated him a little. But back to the OP. Most word processors will open a bunch of different file types, if you make sure the File Open dialog is set to show All Files. Even if the file type is unknown, most WPs have some option to recover all the text from a file. You’ll lose formatting, but that’s usually not too big a problem.