Extract text from amateur radio logbooks (ADIF)
To convert ADIF logbooks to another format, you need GridTracker or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Radio Logbook File" file type, you need software like GridTracker or a similar tool.
The .ADIF (Amateur Data Interchange Format) file is a specialized text-based standard used by amateur radio operators to exchange QSO (radio contact) logbook data between different systems.
Specialized ham radio logging software, such as GridTracker, ARMAP32, and online platforms like Logbook of the World (LoTW), generate and read these files. Early specifications were driven by developers like Raymond R. Ortgiesen IV to unify a fragmented ham radio software ecosystem.
Despite its wide adoption in its niche, the .ADIF format has severe usability disadvantages for general computing. It relies on an archaic, length-defined tag-value syntax (e.g., <CALL:4>W1AW), making it tedious and error-prone to edit manually. Standard office applications, databases, and web browsers cannot natively parse this syntax to display the data as a readable table. Without specialized software, the file looks like a cluttered mess of tags.
To effectively analyze transmission reports, locations, and frequencies, users need to convert .ADIF files to standard CSV or XLSX formats. This maps the complex radio tags into neat spreadsheet columns. Alternatively, converting to XML or JSON is useful for web database imports.
Because the tag-value structure is entirely unique to the amateur radio community, generic data converters simply fail to recognize the data boundaries and output corrupt text. Standard online converters fail to process it properly. Just drag and drop your file onto convert.guru to identify the format, inspect its internal text structure, and convert it to a universally readable format when possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ADIF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ADI, AVIF, YD1AXY-SSB-40M, CSV, AIDF, TXT, XLSX, LOG, JPG, MDB, PDF, ADX and XLS files.
If you want to convert ADIF file to CSV, ADI, PDF, JPG, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG or CONF, you can use GridTracker or similar software from the "Amateur Radio Log Exchange" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to ADIF, try GridTracker or another comparable tool in the "Amateur Radio Log Exchange" category.
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 ADIF converter.