Extract text from Text annotation files (ANN)
To convert ANN Annotations to another format, you need brat rapid annotation tool or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Sidecar Annotation File" file type, you need software like brat rapid annotation tool or a similar tool.
The .ANN file format is primarily a standoff text annotation file used by the brat rapid annotation tool to store metadata, entity relations, and notes linked to a primary text document. It is also utilized by LEADTOOLS for image annotations, ABBYY Lingvo for dictionary entries, and game engines for storing character behavior scripts (such as in Baldur's Gate 3).
Because .ANN files function as "sidecar" data containers, they are heavily dependent on their source files (like TXT or JPG). They are proprietary, application-specific, and not natively supported by standard web browsers. If you lose the original software or the source file, reading the raw annotation coordinates or metadata becomes extremely difficult, as the text simply looks like a jumbled list of character offsets and tags.
To make this data readable or usable in modern applications, you must convert it. For web use and data processing, convert .ANN to JSON or XML. If you need to archive the text data for human reading, converting to TXT or CSV is the best approach. Drop your file here to view and convert it securely right in your browser.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ANN file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ANBN, LSD, MAT, QUERY, JQX and MP4 files.
If you want to convert ANN file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use brat rapid annotation tool or similar software from the "Metadata and Annotation Storage" 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 ANN, try brat rapid annotation tool or another comparable tool in the "Metadata and Annotation Storage" 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 ANN converter.