Extract text from ALI files
To convert your ALI file to another format, you need MODELLER or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Bioinformatics Sequence Data" file type, you need software like MODELLER or a similar tool.
.ALI files are predominantly plain text files used in two distinct, high-friction environments: structural bioinformatics and enterprise reporting.
1. Bioinformatics (MODELLER): In scientific workflows, the .ALI format contains protein sequence alignments specifically formatted for MODELLER (used for homology modeling). While human-readable, this format is strict and often incompatible with general-purpose alignment viewers like Jalview or Clustal Omega. Researchers frequently hit a wall when trying to feed an .ALI file into downstream phylogenetic or visualization tools that expect standard FASTA or PHY (Phylip) formats. The conversion challenge involves parsing the specific header lines (structure code, sequence type) that MODELLER requires but other tools reject.
2. SAP ABAP Lists: In the corporate sector, .ALI files appear as exported lists or reports from SAP ERP systems (ABAP List Output). These files essentially lock critical business data into a static text layout. Users typically need to extract this data into XLSX (Excel) for analysis or PDF for archival, rather than dealing with the raw, whitespace-dependent text dump that the .ALI format provides.
Recommendation:
Convert.Guru analyzes your ALI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted 130, GFM and GPX 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 ALI converter.