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What is a .TXT file and how to open, view and edit one

The .TXT format or text file format is one of the most basic and widely compatible text formats. As they mostly comprise unformatted text, you can open .TXT files on almost any kind of operating system across a variety of hardware.

Find out how to create, edit and transfer these files - and explore TXT meaning and history with us.

What you’ll learn.

What are .ASC & .ASCII files?

An ASC file is a variant of the ASCII format, which is an encryption file used by Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) for secure online communication. It includes messages and digital signatures, as well as plain text and binary information. It also includes a verification key. It’s mainly used to post online security notices and to transmit messages by text and email.

What does .ASC & .ASCII stand for?

ASCII means American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASC is a variant of this file type. It is not to be confused with ActionScript Communication files, which share the .ASC file extension.

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History of .ASC & .ASCII files.

The American National Standards Institute published ASCII as a standard in 1963 based on encoding for telegraph data. Today, ASCII files are used to translate binary information into simple plain text files like .TXT. As a result, they’re often used as an intermediary between programmes that don’t support each other’s formats.

What are .ASC & .ASCII files used for?

Secure communication.

An ASC file is an ASCII file that the encryption application Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) uses to enable secure communication. It provides this extra layer of security through its digitally-signed messaging, which can be authenticated using PGP software. On top of this, it also includes text and binary data of the original message.

Standardisation.

ASCII files create a standardised format for importing information into different applications.

File transfer.

If you’re working with different applications and they don’t import their respective formatting when a file is transferred, you may be able to solve this by importing and exporting ASCII documents.

Find out more about other document files and types of text files, with Adobe.

Pros and cons of .ASC & .ASCII files.

Pros:

Universally accepted.

ASC’s character coding is accepted globally and universally applied in the computing industry through the Unicode standard.

Compact character encoding.

ASCII data only needs as many bytes to store or send as the number of data characters in the file.

Programming benefits.

Letter and number character codes are easily adapted for certain to programming techniques, which makes the binary and plain-text data of ASC/ASCII a major plus point. This enables the manipulation of text as well as the use of numbers for calculations or storage as raw data.

Cons:

Limited character set.

Extended ASCII offers 255 distinct characters. This is usually enough for English language users, but it can be difficult for languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet.

How to open an .ASC or .ASCII file.

To open an .ASC or .ASCII file, simply double-click it and the relevant application on your system should open it. There are a range of third-party plugins available for Windows and Mac operating systems, such as Mozilla SeaMonkey with Enigmail. You can usually open them as a simple text file.

How to create and edit an .ASC or .ASCII file.

There are a few ways to create and edit a .ASC or .ASCII file.

To create an .ASC or .ASCII file:

  1. Export your document using the export dialogue box and click .ASCII or .ASC text from the saving options displayed
  2. Choose from Default, International or Unicode as a character set for the exported file
  3. Select the number of characters you want to fit per line in the ASCII file. Please note that the default is 75 characters.

You can edit your the ASCII file locally using a text editor. To do this, download the file using FTP (file transfer protocol) in binary mode. This will ensure the encoding is not changed during the transfer.

How do I convert .ASC to PDF?

To convert an .ASC file to PDF, you can use Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Pro and print to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver.

  1. Open the .ASC file in a text editor or a word processing software.
  2. Format the text as desired, including any headers, footers, page numbers and other necessary elements.
  3. Save the formatted file as a .DOC or .DOCX file.
  4. Go to Adobe Word to PDF free online tool (link to frictionless) & convert your file to PDF.

Learn about files similar to .ASC & .ASCII files

.TXT

Learn everything there is to know about the most widely used plain text file format.

.ODS

Find out about OpenDocument Spreadsheet files and how they can be used most effectively.

.WPS

A fellow text file, discover knowledge about these documents from Microsoft Works Word Processor.

.IMP

Learn about this database management software today.

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.ASC & .ASCII FAQs.

Is ASC the same as ASCII?

The terms ASC and ASCII are often used interchangeably, but ASC data files are recognised as streams of ASCII characters containing data values that are arranged by rows and columns.

What programme will open a .ASC file?

You can open ASC files with a range of free programmes including Mozilla Thunderbird, Gpg4win, SeaMonkey, Notepad, Notepad++ and Notepad2, GNU Privacy Guard and Apple’s TextEdit.

Is CSV an ASCII file?

CSV documents are ASCII files in which values are separated by commas, semicolons, spaces and other forms of separators. CSVs can be opened using a varied range of programmes, including Notepad. They are typically used to exchange structured information among programmes that are not able to interact directly.

Is a .TXT file an ASCII file?

ASCII files are classified as plain text files. These documents usually have extensions like .txt or they can have no extension at all. While ASCII files allocate a number to each letter, digit and symbol, plain text files do not contain any formatting codes, fonts, italics, bold, headers, footers, underlines or graphics.

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