One of the best ways to troubleshoot your Windows operating system, application or service is to refer the log file that app or service produces as the app initiates. However, do you know what a log file is and how to check what?
In this post, we have listed what is Log file and how to access it. Let’s begin!
What’s A Log File?
Log is a file extension automatically create a file which is capable of recording of events that has been performed on your machine by running software, operating systems and chat between different users via communication software. These files contain several things, but usually these files are used to display all events that relate to the system or application.
In other words, a log files keep an accurate track of what is going on behind the curtains and what’s not. In fact, if there is something happen with a crucial system then you can easily get the information of the things that happened right before the malfunction took place. The concept of a log file is to monitor and record whatever is going on with apps, operating system and server.
Well, most of the log files has the log file extension wherein there are some programs that only works on txt extension or on a distinct proprietary extension instead of using log file extension.
Many of the servers generate log files to keep a tab on visitors and to monitor bandwidth usage. Programs like Web stats let the Web hosts examine log files by generated graphs and charts that can easily represent logged website traffic data in a graphical format.
How to Access A Log File?
Most of the log files are recorded in plain text so any of the editors can access the log file without any trouble. However, your Windows computer is going to use Notepad to access a LOG file when you double-click on it by default. In the simple words, log files are quite similar to regular text files and contain data files in the plain text. In order to read the files, you can go with any of the text editor you want like Notepad or MS Word.
You can access a log file by using the app which is already inherent or installed on your system for opening LOG files. However, you need a word processing tool installed on your machine to access a log file with it like OpenOffice, Microsoft suite, and Notepad++.
In case, you don’t own any text editor then you can use web browsers to support your look at log files. In order to do that all you need to do is, you need to drag and drop the particular file that you would like to access into a new tab.
Now, you will notice that your browser will show that you have everything in the file will be available in the new tab.
If you want to access the file with any other programs, then you click on Default to change the program in which you want to access the log file. If you’re a Windows user, then you need to right -click on the name of the file and choose Open With the option to select the programs in which you want to access the files. Now, you will be prompted with an alert message in your Windows computer then you need to click on the program that you would like use. Now, to access the file, you need to choose Always Use This App To Open and then hit OK.
How to Convert a LOG File?
If you’re looking for the straightforward way to convert your log file to another format like PDF, CSV and XLSX (Excel) then you to copy the entire data to the programs that support the file format and save the data in the new file.
For an instance, it is possible that you can access a log file in the Notepad and copy the entire text & paste the data into another spreadsheet program MS suite and save the file to PDF or CSV.
Note: There are some of the apps and operating systems have their own tools for inspecting logs they the apps generate.
Now, you have successfully learned what is a log file and how to access it with ease. You can open your log files to check out the detailed information about apps or back up if you have any issue in accessing those apps. Please let us know in the comment box if you find this article useful.