Extract text from A02 files
To convert your A02 file to another format, you need Alpha Anywhere or other Database software.
To convert other file formats to the "Database Object / Archive" file type, you need software like Alpha Anywhere or a similar tool.
The .a02 extension is a split personality format that typically falls into one of two distinct categories, causing significant user confusion.
According to internal data, this is the most common classification. These files are proprietary database objects used by Alpha Five (now known as Alpha Anywhere), a rapid application development platform.
The Problem: These are internal component files, often representing a specific table definition, set configuration, or memo field container within a larger database workspace. They are not designed to be opened individually. Because the format is proprietary to Alpha Software, you cannot simply double-click to view them in Excel or Notepad. Users often encounter these when recovering data from legacy systems or partial backups.
The Solution: To convert or view the data, you must load the file within the Alpha Anywhere environment. From there, you can export the tables to open formats like CSV, XLSX (Excel), or migrate the data to a standard SQL database.
A widely encountered use case is as a segment of a split archive created by ALZip. Large files (like videos or disk images) are chopped into smaller pieces (e.g., .alz, .a00, .a01, .a02) to bypass email attachment limits or FAT32 file size restrictions.
The Problem: A standalone .a02 file is useless. It is just a fragment of binary data. Attempting to "convert" it alone will result in a corrupted file. You strictly need the preceding parts (specifically the .alz or .a00 master file) in the same directory.
The Solution: Do not try to convert the .a02 file directly. Instead, gather all sequence files and use ALZip, WinZip, or 7-Zip to extract the original payload (which could be anything, such as a MP4, ISO, or DOCX).
Convert.Guru analyzes your A02 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted A00, A07, A04, A05 and A01 files.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our A02 converter.