plain text (can be previewed but now viewed in program)

Hey guys I have a bunch of pictures I copied onto my computer from an aim conversation, and I can never get them again.

I am thinking maybe its a windows thing that mac doesn't understand because it appears as a confused text file when I open it, but when you push get info, you can see a little preview

What's the file extension?

it says kind: plain text and is only 488 kb for a picture odd.

but it has absolutely no extension, I just found it kind of strange it could give me a preview of the picture at all

Ok, under the Get Info screen, drop down the arrow under Name and Extension. If "Hide Extension" is checked, uncheck it. Now click in the text field and change the ".txt" to ".jpg" and hit Enter. When it asks you about changing the file extension, choose "Use .jpg". Close out of the Get Info window and try to open the file. Or just right click, choose "Open With" and choose Preview.

.txt means it's being read as a Text file. If you change the extension to .jpg it should read it as a Photo. I'm not sure why it was saved as a .txt file.