Sometimes if the recipient of a message created in Outlook isn’t using Outlook themselves, they’ll just get a winmail.dat file as an attachment instead of being able to view the full message. Sometimes email servers-Microsoft Outlook in particular-can sometimes automatically convert an email into the DAT format. If you tried to open a file that doesn’t contain plain text, you might see a lot of “NUL” references and some obscure characters. Provided the file you opened is text-based, you should be able to read the contents. In the “Open With” window, choose the text editor you want to use and then click the “OK” button.

In Windows, right-click DAT file you want to open and then click the “Open With” command. Most of the time, though, DAT files are in plain text format, and you can open those with any standard text editor. How Do I Open a DAT File?īecause it’s difficult to tell whether the DAT file you’re dealing with contains text, pictures, videos, or config files for software on your computer, how you open a file will vary depending on what information it contains. Many games, like Minecraft, use DAT files to store chunks of levels, which are loaded on the fly as a player navigates throughout the level. They designed only for use by the application and not to be opened manually by the user. Many programs create, open, and reference DAT files. The information contained inside a DAT file is usually either plain text or binary, although in rare cases you might encounter them as the actual data of a video file for programs like VCDGear or CyberLink PowerDirector. In short, a DAT file contains important information for software to handle.

They might even show up in your email as an attachment from a Microsoft Exchange Server. Some apps that use them are CCleaner, Porteus, and Minecraft. dat file extension is a generic data file that stores specific information relating to the program that created the file.

Dat file extension