I saved some pics my daughter sent me in email, but now I can't open them. . .they come up in the window with a red X in a box. When I saved them, I saved them as ".art", and the icon has the blue IE "e". I have since been saving pics as bitmap, and they open OK. Are these lost forever or is there a way to recover them?
SSB

Do you know what format the files were sent to you as? (the three letters after the dot in the file name indicates the file format, or extension). Find out from your daughter if you can.

Try renaming the extension anyway. The way to do this follows:

Right click on one of the photos and choose COPY from the menu. Right click anywhere on a blank bit of the Window (or go to The Desktop), right click and select PASTE. This is just to create a back up of the photo so you can try things without affecting the original.

Right click on the copy you just made and choose 'Rename' from the menu. Highlight just the art (not the dot) part of the name and rename it to bmp. When asked if you're sure you want to change the file extension, choose 'Yes'. The icon will change to the same type as all your other photos that open properly. Double click on the changed photo and see if it opens. This may also work if you change the letters after the dot to jpg. Try that if bmp doesn't work.

There is another way that can be tried through the 'File Types' options if this fails but try the above first.

Once you have found out what works, the procedure can be carried out on all the photos. The file names can then be changed to anything of your choice. The only rule is to leave the dot and the three letters that come after it unchanged.

These particular files won't open to pics or anything else at all. I just get the box with the red X in it when I click to open. I have to be able to open them in order to save them as something else. I had used the ".art" choice because it was default and I didn't realize that there was another choice before I hit the save button. Since that time, I now save them as bmp or jpg, but I wanted to see if I could salvage these few that I didn't change over because I didn't know what I was doing. In properties it show them as ".art" and 3 of the others are ".jpg", but none of these particular ones will open as a pic.
SSB

Rather than suggesting ways of trying to open the file, it might be best if I offer to take a look at one. If there's a way of opening it I'll find it. Then it could be saved as something else and sent back. PM following.