I have an audio file that was saved from a mobile telephone voicemail on either windows xp or windows 7 in 2009. It has a .wav.shs extension. I no longer have the computer on which it was saved. I'm trying to play it, but unsuccessfully. I understand the shs extension is obsolete, but I'm quite desperate to find a way to play this file, because it has personal significance.
You have an unusual situation with that file, a .shs file is a scrap file from word or excel but you also have the .wav extension on it.
They might play it by opening either word or excel then drag and drop the file into either document and if all is good the file should open automatically. You may see a prompt to choose a language, pick one, I'm assuming English and that should start the .wav file.
Sometimes I get .aspx files that I know are pdf's and all I do is add the .pdf after the .aspx and foxit reader will open the file, why I'm saying this is you may want to try removing the .shs from the file and see if it plays that way; Try clicking on the [now] .wav only file.
You'll get a warning that doing that will/may damage the file so before you do any of this right click on the file and make a copy and work with the copy, saving the original.
Related:
WD: What Is a Scrap (.shs) File?
How to Open the SHS File Extension
Thank you for your reply. I know it's a strange situation. The file is from a long time ago and I don't even remember exactly how it was created. I do know for certain that I was able to play it originally. I did some searching about the file and tried dragging it into word and excel. I was able to drag it into word, but when I tried to open it, it asked what application to use. I tried windows media player and vlc. Neither worked. I was not even able to drag it into excel. I also tried simply removing the .shs extension and that didn't work either. I opened the file using notepad++ and I can see "Wave Sound" and "Soundrec" on the 8th line. There is a lot of gibberish embedded between NUL characters, so it's hard to tell where the WAV portion begins and ends or if it's inside some sort of wrapper.
As I said, I really would like to find a way to play this file, because it has personal significance. I wonder if I should try and set up a windows xp computer.
The command line utility FFmpeg can convert almost any audio or video format into any other. In a command prompt type...
ffmpeg -i yourfile.wav.shs
...to see if it recognises it as an audio file, and...
ffmpeg -i yourfile.wav.shs output.wav
to convert it.
Another approach may be to treat it as a .shs file that contains a .wav file. You may be able to extract the .wav it contains by opening it with 7-Zip File Manager. An easy way to do that is add a .7z extension to the file.
Quote