Understanding how MapInfo stores information about you maps is important from the point of correctly renaming and deleting files. For most file types such as spreadsheet and word processing documents deleting or renaming files can be easily achieved through the windows explorer interface. However, if you wish to rename or delete MapInfo .tab files you should always do so through the MapInfo file interface. The reason for always using this method is to avoid file errors which could occur if you inadvertently used the windows explorer option.
A MapInfo .tab file format consists of a number of separate files which are necessary to create your map within MapInfo. If you delete or rename files outside of the MapInfo environment you will not automatically delete or rename all the files which go to make up the MapInfo .tab file system. Each MapInfo file consists of a .tab, .dat, .id and .map file. There may also be an additional .ind file if indexing has occurred. So by using the MapInfo interface all the relevant files will automatically be either deleted or renamed, whereas through the windows interface only the .tab file will be either deleted or renamed.
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