Temporary .tmp file: what is this and how to open it?

Often, due to the operation of some processes, the user suddenly notices that a TMP file has appeared in the system. What is it, guess not all. And attempts to open it with an ordinary double click in most cases lead to nothing. We will deal with the issue of opening and viewing.

TMP-file: what is this?

In general, the reduction in the format of the TMP file is from the English temporary (temporary). Such objects can appear in the system in a variety of situations - when installing software, opening documents and saving them, when backing up to restore information later, etc.

If you look at the extension that the TMP-file has, what it is, you can explain it in terms of the functioning of some processes. In fact, such an object contains temporary information, imprinted at the time of activation of an application and used to roll back the changes.

For example, any user noticed that when installing the programs in the "Wizard" there are buttons to continue the installation and return to the previous stage for selecting other parameters. All this is made possible by the transfer of process information to a temporary TMP file.

Similarly, you can consider the same office applications in which there is a function to cancel the changes made or to return the document to its original state, when there were no changes whatsoever. For such actions, temporary objects also meet. And they also have the function of restoring when documents are accidentally closed, which have not been saved by the user, but have passed the autosave procedure. Have you noticed how sometimes office editors suggest to restore an unsaved document?

Very often temporary files can be found when downloading information from the Internet. In particular, in this form, music from the popular social network "VKontakte" can be downloaded. Only in this case the downloaded files for listening will then need to be renamed and changed to MP3.

How to open a TMP file in the simplest version

To open an object (objects) of this type, it is not enough to pay attention only to the extension (.tmp). You should also consider his name.

Most often, you can view only files with "normal" names without problems. But the files, at the very beginning of the name of which the "~" symbol is present, are closed objects, which can not be opened when the application is active, using it.

If you consider standard temporary files, you can open them for viewing in any text editor such as the standard Notepad or even the Word office editor. But even here the user can often find disappointment. The matter is that in most cases instead of usual text on the screen the senseless set of symbols will be displayed. And this is due not to the encoding, which in the same "Word" can be changed quite simply.

Sometimes the opening can be done using any Internet browser - yes, even the same Internet Explorer.

Often, such objects contain cache data or information on the emergency shutdown of some program or even on a forced reboot of the operating system itself.

A special kind of TMP files

There is another kind of format that a TMP file can have. What is this format? The most common are temporary files of currently edited projects created in the music notation application Finale.

Such objects are also a kind of closed type files that can not be viewed by standard methods. Their function is similar to the role of temporary files of other programs, but they contain information on caching data and settings of the current project.

Issues of deleting TMP files

So, we looked at the TMP file. What is it is, perhaps, a little understandable. Now a few words about the appearance and removal of objects of this type. In the standard version, temporary files that are responsible for the processes of installing or opening documents are automatically deleted when applications are terminated. For example, just look at the appearance of a temporary object when you open a Word document. When the program is closed, the file disappears.

Another thing is when such objects are stored in the Temp folder (either on the system or in the user's directory) or in the Temporary Internet Files directory. From here you can delete them manually. But if at the moment the file is used by some program, this will not be possible. The presence of temporary files left after the completion of the programs is typical for obsolete Windows systems.

If it's time to remove this sort of garbage, it's better to use the optimizer programs that allow you to search for all objects of this type, including application cache files, and delete them without affecting the system.