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[attr style=”width:90px”],”A common question that comes up on the MarcEdit listserv revolves around the applications ability to process a specific file extension.  To a large extent, file extensions have no intrinsic meaning, rather; they are essentially shortcuts within an operating system to associate a set of actions with a group of files.  File associations that become ubiquitous due to their association with a specific tool or program, inherit additional associations due to the shared experiences of a group of users.  This is all to say that MarcEdit’s ability to process a particular file extension has nothing to do with the extension of the file itself, but is completely dependent on the data found inside that file.  While many tools that export MARC records have come to utilize MarcEdit’s .mrc file extension to represent MARC data, other tools like OCLC’s Connexion program utilize the .dat file extension to represent MARC files, while Innovative Interfaces export program generates .out files for it’s MARC records.  MarcEdit can each of these file types.”

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One of the benefits of MarcEdit’s longevity is that MarcEdit’s default file extension for Binary MARC data (.mrc)  has largely been co-opted by the library vendor community to represent binary MARC data.  For MarcEdit users, this means that these files are automatically associated with the application and the application’s shortcuts.  However, some tools like Innovative Interfaces export program utilize a different file extension to output MARC data.  In this case, the Innovative program utilizes a .out file extension to represent MARC data outputted from the program.  For users that find themselves working with common alternative file extensions may want to associate the extension with a specific MarcEdit action.

MarcEdit provides a built-in process for associating additional file extensions with the application by modifying the File Association Settings.  Looking at Figure 8, one can see that by default, the ability to edit MarcEdit’s three primary file associations are disabled.  This is due to the fact that MarcEdit’s installer installs these file associations at a system level, so users need to have administrative access to modify these global associations.  For additional file extensions, MarcEdit utilizes a different process, creating associations with files at the user level, so different users, logged onto the same computer could have different file extensions assigned to the application.

MarcEdit: Managing File Associations

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[attr style=”width:90px”], “While MarcEdit’s user defined file associations occur at the user profile level, it should be noted that individuals wanting to associate new file types with MarcEdit should use some caution.  Some file extensions utilized by tools like Connexion, are used in other contexts within the operating system.  While it would be unlikely that associating a specific file extension with MarcEdit would cause issues with a user’s system, it is also difficult to know for certain all the potential consequences related to changing the file association of a system file.  As such, it’s best to treat the following file extensions as special and not associate them with MarcEdit: .bin and .dat.”