Force Saving A File With A Certain Extension

Sometimes, particularly with plain text files, you want to save a file as a certain extension. For example, you might want to save a text file with an INI or an XYZ extension.

One option you have for doing this in the Save As dialog box is changing the option in the “Files of type” drop down appropriately and then typing the filename. However if you simply put the full name of the file – including the extension – in quotes, this forces the specified filename regardless of what the “Files of type” drop down says.

For example in Notepad, if you type some text and then go to Save As, you will see the default extension is text files (TXT). If you type “myfile.zyx” (including the quotes) into the file name field, the file will save with the extension you specified instead of the default extension.

While this may not be a huge time saver, it definitely can save you some clicks when you need to use it.

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One comment

  1. Yup, that’s really useful, but.. Instead of searching the file ext. in the dropdown menu, we could just open a folder, go to tools, choose Folder Options.., click on View and then tick Hide extensions for known file types, apply changes and enjoy. After doing this you’ll be able to just write a .extension as a filename (after the main f. name) when saving a file no matter the program you’ve used to create it

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