CTT Converter

Extract text from CTT files

Select File
Drop or upload your .CTT file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your CTT file

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

Convert CTT to another file type

To convert your CTT file to another format, you need Windows Live Messenger or other Data software.

Convert a file to CTT

To convert other file formats to the "Contact Management" file type, you need software like Windows Live Messenger or a similar tool.

About CTT files

The .CTT file extension is a relic from the golden age of instant messaging, primarily serving as the contact list backup format for Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger). These files store your "buddy list" - names, email addresses, and groups - in a structured XML format.

The core problem for users today is that Windows Live Messenger was discontinued by Microsoft in 2013 and merged into Skype. Consequently, the original software required to natively "Import" these files no longer functions on modern operating systems. While the file is technically human-readable text, opening it in Notepad reveals a cluttered mess of XML tags (e.g., <contact>) that makes extracting hundreds of emails tedious and error-prone.

To recover your old contacts for use in modern platforms like Outlook, Gmail, or smartphones, you generally need to convert the .CTT file.

Best Conversion Targets:

To CSV/Excel: Ideal for sorting, editing, or bulk-importing into email clients.
To VCF (vCard): The standard for importing contacts directly into Android or iOS devices.
To TXT: For a stripped-down, readable list of emails without the XML code.

*Note: A small percentage of .CTT files may be acoustic data tables used by CATT-Acoustic software. These are completely different binary or text data files used in architectural acoustics prediction.*

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

Users also converted MCO, ML20 and XSPF files.

FAQ

If you want to convert CTT file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use Windows Live Messenger or similar software from the "Contact List Backup" 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 CTT, try Windows Live Messenger or another comparable tool in the "Contact List Backup" category.

The CTT 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 CTT converter.