How to Find Out the File Type Without an Extension

Do you have a file that has no extension, and you want to open it?

Luckily there is a tool called TrIDNet that contains a database of all file types with their signatures.

Each file has its own signature, this signature can be used to find its extension, this is done automatically using the free TrIDNet tool.

You can use TrIDNet to recover the extension of a file via a large database that can be downloaded from the programmer’s site.

You will discover in this tutorial the steps to follow to have the extension of your files.

Let’s go!

How to Find Out the File Type Without an Extension

What Does a File Without Extension Look Like?

Before starting our procedure, I want to clear things up a bit…

To display file extensions, simply open any folder, go to “File” > “Change folder and search options“.

Then, in the “View” tab, uncheck the phrase “Hide extensions for known file types“.

Normally, if a file is known, you will see the extension in the file name or even via the context menu then “Properties“.

Here is an example of some files without extensions:

Now let’s see how to know the extensions of the files  unknown1 for example.

Download and Prepare the TrIDNet Tool

You can download the TrIDNet tool via this page:  http://mark0.net/soft-tridnet-e.html  (Click on “ZIP” next to TrIDNet, then click on “7z” next to TrID XML defs)

After downloading the two archives (ZIP & 7z) …

Unzip the Zip file that contains the TrIDNet tool into a folder.

Then unzip the 7z file that contains the XML files for the file type definitions in the same folder.

Double-click TrIDNet.exe to launch the tool.

Now let’s see how to use TrDNet

Using TrIDNet

Double-click the TrIDNet.exe file to launch the application.

First click on the “Rescan Defs” button, wait for loading …

Once the loading is finished click on the “Browse…” button to recover the unknown file.

Choose your file then click on the “Open” button .

Then click on the “Analyze!” Button to analyze the file.

After the analysis, the table below will load the data related to the extension of the file in question.

In my case, it is a DOCX file, with a “Match” value of 51.1% which means that the tool is sure that this file is DOCX.

Double-click on your extension match for more details.

Leave a comment below if you need any help!

Thanks for sharing in advance