GBK Converter

Extract text from GenBank or backup files (GBK)


Drop or upload your .GBK file
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How to extract text from your GBK file

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

Convert GBK to another file type

To convert GBK files to another format, you need SnapGene or other Data software.

Convert a file to GBK

To convert other file formats to the "Bioinformatics or Database File" file type, you need software like SnapGene or a similar tool.


About GBK files

The .gbk file extension primarily represents an NCBI GenBank Data File, a standard text-based format used in bioinformatics to store DNA or RNA genetic sequence data alongside biological metadata annotations. Biologists and researchers use specialized software like SnapGene, Benchling, or programming libraries like Biopython to read and manipulate these files. Alternatively, .gbk is also frequently used as a Database Backup File for Firebird and InterBase relational databases, created using the gbak command-line tool. A minor subset of .gbk files belongs to legacy Gionee mobile phone backups or Gobstones block-based programming projects. Working with .gbk files poses significant disadvantages because standard tools cannot process them. GenBank files contain highly structured plain text that can exceed hundreds of megabytes, crashing standard text editors and making them incompatible with regular spreadsheet applications. Firebird backups are closed, proprietary binary archives that cannot be explored directly and require a live database server for restoration. For GenBank data, the most common conversion targets are FASTA (which strips annotations to leave only raw sequence data) or CSV (to extract structured annotations into tables). Database backups cannot be converted directly; they must be restored to an active database before data can be exported to SQL, CSV, or XML. Because the .gbk extension spans wildly different use cases, standard online converters almost always fail. They cannot distinguish between genetic plain text and relational database binaries. However, you can drag and drop your file into convert.guru. Our system will analyze the internal headers to identify the true format. If we detect supported plain text GenBank data or embedded XML (like Gobstones projects), we can display the contents and facilitate conversion when technically possible.

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

Users also converted GENBANK, GDB, TXT, DNA, TWM, FASTA, ZIP, FNA, GB, DOCX, PDF, TED and EXE files.


FAQ

If you want to convert GBK file to FASTA, TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX, ODT, PAGES, TEX, LATEX, MD, MARKDOWN or LOG, you can use SnapGene or similar software from the "Genomic Sequence or Database Backup" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert PDF, DOC, ASC, TODO, NFO, MEMO, README, DOCX, JPG, TXT, NOTE or RTF files to GBK, try SnapGene or another comparable tool in the "Genomic Sequence or Database Backup" category.



The GBK 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 GBK converter.