Opening a POL File

The POL file type is primarily associated with Windows.

POL	File extension: POL
	File type:	policy

What is a POL file

POL files mostly belong to Windows by Microsoft. A POL file contains registry-based settings defined by the Local Group Policy Editor on Windows operating system. Two subfolders (Machine and User) in the %SystemRoot%\System32\GroupPolicy\ folder contain system (Registry.pol) and user level settings. Each POL file contains registry keys/values for each registry entry. Another type of POL file is a 3D polygonal model created by PolyWorks 3-dimensional modeling, point cloud, and reverse engineering software suite. POL is also the filename extension of the policy (settings) file used by AscToHTM text-to-HTML conversion program.

How to open a POL file

You need a suitable software like Windows to open a POL file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your POL file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a POL file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online POL Text Viewer

Choose your .pol file to analyze

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

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POL file format:

The file format, which is the arrangement and type of data in a file, determines which program can open the file. The initial characters of a file are called signature, sometimes also referred to as "magic bytes". The signature can be used to infer the file format. Nonetheless, different programs can utilize the same file extension to represent distinct file formats. Double-clicking on the file often results in an error when opening. So a detailed analysis of a file is vital in order to determine the format and the associated program. In the following you will find our evaluation of the POL files:

The POL extension is quite commonly used. The file itself is used by different programs with different formats. The two most common formats are as follows:

• 55% of all POL files are associated with Windows Policy data. These are binary files, so they do not contain words or text. The files are on average 2 KB in size and range from 410 bytes to 28 KB. The file type was developed only in the last few years. The following keywords are characteristic: PReg, Software, Microsoft, Policies and Windows. A usual file name is Registry.pol. Such files are related to ntuser, machine, policies, user, policy and local.
• 4% of all POL files use ZIP compression, so several files are combined and compressed into one POL file. Tip: If you rename the file ending to .zip and then double-click it, you see the included files and images. The files are 410 KB to 5 MB in size, with a median of 1 MB. Several words can almost always be found in the files, e.g. Collectors. Such POL files store data about itsscsd, windows, unix and itss.

All other POL files (41%) have no uniform format, often, for example, PolyWorks Polygonal format, TWA, FILE, Title and LOB. These files sometimes refer to naca or pogo. Just click the "Choose your .pol file to analyze" button on this page to find out what your POL file is.