But the learning process to use them can sometimes be cumbersome. So patience and a willingness to read the HELP selections in whatever program you use are an absolute must. There is one program we've found to be so easy to install and use, that HELP instructions are not included and are not necessary. Its called Decode Shell Extension. Binary files are files that contain information other than text and that are usually meant to be used by specific programs.
Examples are spreadsheets, sound files, movie files, graphics, and word processing documents.
Although word processing documents may look like they contain only text, they actually contain unseen formatting characters. The basic building block for data in a computer is called a binary digit - bit for short. A character, such as the letter a or the comma, is stored as a byte. Again, that byte consists of 8 bits, each of which is either a one or a zero. For example, the capital letter A in binary code is 01000000.