.DOT File Extension

Template created by Microsoft Word, a word processing application; contains pre-formatted document settings, such as headers, footers, margins, font sizes, and other common page styles; used to create multiple documents that have similar formatting, such as company letterheads, business memos, or envelopes.

Some templates are included with Microsoft Word while others are created by Word users. The Normal template (Normal.dot file) stores the default document template that is opened when users open Word.

Mathematical graph created using the DOT language, which allows the specification of undirected and directed graphs; saved in a plain text format and contains the definitions of nodes and edges that make up the graph; used for visualizing relationships between entities.

NOTE: Graphviz graphs now use the .GV extension. The ".dot" extension was deprecated so that no conflict would exist between Graphviz graph files and Microsoft Word document templates, which also use the ".dot" extension.