Support Information:
For more information about the shapefile format please see the ArcGIS web site Shapefiles come as a combination of several different file types all of which are used by GIS software to correctly load the file.
A Shapefile is a file format that stores both the geometry and location information about a feature as well as any related attribute information. They can represent data as either points, lines or polygons and are used to depict features on a map. Although not a fully open format, they can be read by a large number of GIS software packages.