What's a '.dat' file?

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I'm experiencing the same problem. My lab ran a research using a software called MEL, which produced .dat files as outputs. Because it is a DOS-based program, do you happen to know how I could crack the data through DOS?

Thanks for your help in advance (much appreciated!!)

Carol

Only with the application that created it, or an application that's designed to be compatible with that original application.

On several occasions people have emailed me Microsoft Word attachments that somehow have turned into ".dat" files when they reached me through Outlook Express, and Windows XP tells me that they are "Unknown File Format" and cannot open them. (This also happened once when someone tried to send me a file in Rich Text Format.) Why do the files change like this, and is there a way either to convert them back into Word documents or to open the ".dat" files that these Word documents have somehow become?

"""Many applications use the file extension ".dat" to indicate a file that contains data. The problem is that so many different programs use ".dat" that it really doesn't tell you anything about the file, what it contains, or what program it belongs to."""..... - is that the entire article.... that's all it shows and it doesn't exactly answer much

That's because there is no answer beyond that. Without knowing the application that created the file, there's precious little that can be done. Even then, it typically requires that appliction, and perhaps even more. Yahoo Messenger's .dat file is a good example, you need yahoo messenger AND you need to be logged in as the account that created it.

Sorry I can't tell you more, but there's just not more to be told.

I have arround a 450 DAT. files & couldnt open them,what if i deleted them?

No way to tell. My recommendation: back them up somewhere (maybe burn them to CD), and then delete them. If something breaks as a result, put them back.

When I send email with attachments, (MS Word, Excel etc.) they are automatically changed to .dat files when received and cannot be opened. How can I stop this?

Depends on your mailer. If Outlook, make sure that your message format is "plain text" or HTML, and NOT Rich Text.

I`m running a cd burner with NERO, so far all the CD`s have come out as .dat files. How can I resolve this???

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