CDF Converter

Extract text from CDF files

Select File
Drop or upload your .CDF file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your CDF file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your CDF file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert CDF to another file type

To convert your CDF file to another format, you need Wolfram Player or other Data software.

Convert a file to CDF

To convert other file formats to the "Scientific Data Container" file type, you need software like Wolfram Player or a similar tool.

About CDF files

The .CDF extension represents a significant duality in file formats, most commonly referring to either the NASA Common Data Format or the Wolfram Computable Document Format.

1. NASA Common Data Format (Scientific Data): Developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, this format is a self-describing, platform-independent standard used to store scalar and multidimensional data arrays. It is prevalent in space physics and climatology.

The Problem: These files are optimized for storage efficiency and programmatic access, not human readability. Opening them requires specialized tools like the CDF Player, IDL, or MATLAB libraries. They are not natively supported by standard spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel.
The Solution: For data analysis and broader accessibility, users often convert scientific CDF files to CSV (for Excel compatibility), NetCDF, or HDF5 (for hierarchical data preservation).

2. Wolfram Computable Document Format (Interactive Docs): Created by Wolfram Research, this format acts as a container for interactive knowledge apps, reports, and diagrams generated in Wolfram Mathematica.

The Problem: While powerful, these files are proprietary. Viewing them requires the large, proprietary Wolfram Player. They cannot be viewed in standard web browsers or PDF readers, locking the content inside the Wolfram ecosystem.
The Solution: For archiving or sharing with non-technical users, these files should be converted to PDF (for static reading) or raster images like PNG (to capture specific states of the interactive elements).

Other less common uses include Affymetrix chip definition files (bioinformatics) and legacy Channel Definition Format files (obsolete Web push technology).

Convert.Guru analyzes your CDF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted CDR, CDF-MS, CDW, PDF, ZIP, CFD, NC, URDU PREP PAR-1, DOC, CSV, CDF2, MDL LOGO CDF and TXT files.

FAQ

If you want to convert CDF file to PDF, ZAR, CSV, PMF, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG or CONF, you can use Wolfram Player or similar software from the "Scientific Data Storage & Interactive Documents" 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 CDF, try Wolfram Player or another comparable tool in the "Scientific Data Storage & Interactive Documents" category.

The CDF Converter Story

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 CDF converter.