Introduction
This page is for computer, program and application tips and tricks that I have not written a full web page for.
Application Files are Containers
It may be seem strange but many user created files using an application are actually a collection of compressed files. The Microsoft Office document files that have an extension ending in x (docx, pptx, xlsx etc.) are usually just renamed zip files. Comic book archive (Wikipedia) fles are compressed file archives. LibreOffice and OpenOffice odt, odp, and ods files are zip files, so are Flash's swf and fla files, and Android apps apk files, and Apple Pages' pages files, Java's jar files.
Here's an example using a pptx file. Rename the .pptx file to .zip and open it. The file struture can now be seen:
Perhaps the most useful part of this is that all the media used in the slides are gathered together in the ppt\media folder
If you have a program such as 7zip, winzip, winrar, etc. then you do not need to rename the file, just open it with one of those programs.
Other document files that are simple archived containers of one sort or another are Windows MSI installation files, ISO Files (disk image files), Outlook .msg files, Visio files, Epubs, and iOS apps ipa files.