How do I selectively show filename suffixes in Windows XP?

It is possible, though it's a bit tricky to set up and if you have a bunch of filename suffixes, it can be a bit tedious to specify, but let me show you how I do it for one specific suffix on my WinXP system, the suffix .avi for video files.

To start out, when I look at my video capture folder, you can see that there are a lot of filenames that have their suffixes displayed, but the one in the top left just says "BlogSearch" (though it clearly has some sort of known type hence it being associated with the VLC icon):

The fastest way I know to change this is to choose Tools --> Options, which gets you to the General preferences for how Windows XP displays this particular folder:

We don't want General options, however, so click on the "File Types" tab, and here's what you'll see:

This is where it gets confusing, because while it seems like you're making a change just for this folder, in fact changing these settings will change how WinXP displays that type of file throughout the entire filesystem. So you can't in fact just have the filename extension displayed in your development folder without it showing that way everywhere. Probably not a problem, but still kind of disconcerting!

Anyway, scroll down the top list until you find the extension you want to modify -- in my case, it's AVI -- and here's how it'll appear:

As you can see, you can change the program associated with this specific file type (useful if you want to have a different app than the default. For example, you might modify .htm and .html files to open with your favorite Web editor, rather than Internet Explorer). What we want is the second button, highlighted with the cursor, labeled "Advanced". Click on that and now you can finally see the option desired:

It's the second checkbox, labeled "Always show extension", that you want to select, as shown. Click that, click on "OK", and forevermore any file of type ".avi" (or whatever you specify) will be shown with its filename suffix:

As it turns out, you can also make this change by going to START --> Settings --> Control Panel --> Folder Options, but really, isn't the way I show easier? :-)

Turning on all extensions for all known filetypes is a different topic and one I'll address in another article, so stay tuned for that too!