Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your CDXML file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert CDXML to another file type
To convert CDXML ChemDraw files to another format, you need ChemDraw or other Data software.
Convert a file to CDXML
To convert other file formats to the "Chemical Drawing XML File" file type, you need software like ChemDraw or a similar tool.
About CDXML files
The .cdxml file extension primarily stands for ChemDraw XML, a specialized chemical drawing format originally created by CambridgeSoft (now managed by PerkinElmer). These files store 2D molecular structures, chemical reactions, and physical properties in an XML-based markup structure. Less frequently, it acts as a Cmdlet Definition XML file used by Microsoft PowerShell to define command metadata. A major disadvantage of .cdxml is its proprietary chemical context. Although the underlying code is plain text XML, standard web browsers and document viewers cannot render the chemical structures visually. Users frequently encounter friction when trying to embed these drawings into research papers or share them with non-chemists. Accessing the visual data typically requires an expensive software license for ChemDraw. To share chemical structures universally, users usually convert .cdxml files to standard graphics formats like PNG and SVG, or document formats like PDF. This ensures the drawings display perfectly across all devices, though it flattens the chemical data and permanently removes editability. Standard online converters frequently fail to process .cdxml files because they lack the specific scientific rendering engines required to parse chemical tags into 2D geometric graphics. As a specialized format, it is notoriously difficult to open or convert correctly without the native software. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your CDXML file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert CDXML file to PDF, CDX, PDB, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG or CONF, you can use ChemDraw or similar software from the "Chemical drawing and structure representation" 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 CDXML, try ChemDraw or another comparable tool in the "Chemical drawing and structure representation" category.
The CDXML 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 CDXML converter.