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I have a .pdf file of my CV and since I don't have any programs that are made for reading/editing PDFs, I set it so that .pdf files open with Chrome by default. Now, when I go to the Properties section of such a .pdf file, it says

Type of file: Chrome HTML Document (.pdf)
Opens with: Google Chrome.

And, as expected, the file opens in Chrome's PDF viewer.

However, when I went to upload my .pdf of my CV to a website, my application would not be completed. The field to which I uploaded the .pdf reads

Allowed file types: .pdf, .doc, .docx.

I then installed the program TeXworks, a TeX frontend, and chose that .pdf files open with it instead by default. Now, the Properties section of the file read

Type of file: PDF File (.pdf)
Opens with: TeXworks.

After trying again, my application was submitted.

My question is: why did changing what program opened the .pdf file change the "type of file"? Shouldn't the "file type" be the same regardless of the program, since the filename extension is always ".pdf"? It appears that simply choosing to open PDFs using Chrome's PDF viewer by default has changed the file in a way, since I couldn't upload it to that website, even though the filename extension was still .pdf. I guess my question could be summed up as: what exactly is the "type of file"? Since it doesn't appear to be the same as the filename extension.

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    yes Windows applies the strings "Chrome HTML Document" or "PDF File" based on the info that the application provides, so if you change the application, the string may (and likely will) change. that only affects how the file is described on your system however. another persons system may use a different application, and thus windows will deliver the string that that application tells it to when opening that same document. this is just part of how windows describes files. remember, windows doesn't know what most types of files are. it only cares about what app opens them. Commented Jul 12, 2024 at 16:24

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Short answer, no, the extension itself is not changed. To the system, it still is a .pdf file. The description may have changed though, but that doesn't matter.

It is possible that the website you uploaded the pdf file to checked for the description, and not actually the filetype. This effectively means the website is poorly coded.

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