afp file extension?

During cleaning up old personal documents I found documents with an afp file extension. These documents are 12 years old, made in the XP period. In view of the file names they should be normal text documents, made in Word or pdf. Maybe also in Outlook or Pagemaker.
With my current programmes (Word, Acrobat, Notepad) I cannot open these or. when opening, text is without any sense.
Searching on the Web, I find that it could be IBM related, but I never used an IBM programme. Further, converters are available, but I am not really interested in converting since the documents are outdated and not relevant any more.
My big question is: anybody an idea what could have happened that standard documents now show an afp extension?

PiKo said:

During cleaning up old personal documents I found documents with an afp file extension. These documents are 12 years old, made in the XP period. In view of the file names they should be normal text documents, made in Word or pdf. Maybe also in Outlook or Pagemaker.
With my current programmes (Word, Acrobat, Notepad) I cannot open these or. when opening, text is without any sense.
Searching on the Web, I find that it could be IBM related, but I never used an IBM programme. Further, converters are available, but I am not really interested in converting since the documents are outdated and not relevant any more.
My big question is: anybody an idea what could have happened that standard documents now show an afp extension?

From what I could find out.....an AFP file could be a few things. 1 is a file format developed by IBM. 2 that it's part of some encryption software. 3 it's some port of a printer protocol.

As to how it happend....who knows. If they are not relevant and outdated as you say....just delete them and not worry about them anymore.