Google converts all file types it searches to either HTML or text (unless, of course, they already are in one of these formats). Google searches a variety of file formats including
| File Format | Suffix | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Adobe Acrobat PDF | A publishing format commonly used for product manuals and documents of all sorts. | |
| Adobe PostScript | ps | A printing format often used for academic papers. |
| Hypertext Markup Language | html or htm | The primary language for web pages. |
| Lotus 1-2-3 | wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, or wku | A spreadsheet format. |
| Lotus WordPro | lwp | A word processing format. |
| MacWrite | mw | A word processing format. |
| Microsoft Excel | xls | A spreadsheet format. |
| Microsoft PowerPoint | ppt | A format for presentations and slides. |
| Microsoft Word | doc | A common word processing format. |
| Microsoft Works | wks, wps, or wdb | A word processing format. |
| Microsoft Write | wri | A Macintosh word processing format. |
| Rich Text Format | rtf | A format used to exchange documents between Microsoft Word and other formats. |
| Plain Text | ans or txt | Ordinary text with no special formating. |
Clicking on a link to a non-HTML file will launch the associated program for reading the file, provided it’s installed on your system.
If you can’t view the page in the native format — for instance, if you don’t have Adobe Acrobat on your computer, or if you want faster access to the file — click on either the “View as HTML” or “View as Text” link.
Note: Portions of some files converted to HTML or text may be difficult to read.
You can use the File Format section of the Advanced Search form or the filetype: search operator to restrict your results to a particular format.
For more information about file types that Google supports, visit www.google.com/help/faq_filetypes.html.
Exercises
These problems give you practice viewing files of different types. For hints and answers to selected problems, see the Solutions page.
- Find a document with tips on job interviewing and salary negotiation that is in PDF/Adobe Acrobat format. What differences in the appearance of the document result from viewing it in its native format, Adobe Acrobat versus HTML?
- Find a Power Point slide presentation on first aid and choking. View the presentation as HTML.
- Find pdf or Postscript documents and course notes on symplectic geometry that are on university and other educational sites.
This problem was inspired by Julian Uschersohn.
tags (keywords): file format, results
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