GOV Converter

Extract text from government documents (GOV)

Select File
Drop or upload your .GOV file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your GOV file

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

Convert GOV to another file type

To convert GOV documents to another format, you need Google Chrome or other Web software.

Convert a file to GOV

To convert other file formats to the "Misnamed Download Archive" file type, you need software like Google Chrome or a similar tool.

About GOV files

A .GOV file is typically an anomaly rather than a standard file format. In the vast majority of cases (approx. 45%), this file is actually a Portable Document Format (PDF) file that was misnamed during the download process from a government portal, or a MIME HTML (MHTML) web archive (approx. 11%) saved incorrectly. The .gov extension is reserved as a Top-Level Domain (TLD) for US government entities (like IRS or Medicare) and should not technically appear as a file suffix on your desktop.

Users typically encounter this file when downloading tax forms, receipts, or application summaries where the browser or server misconfigured the Content-Disposition header, causing the file to save as filename.gov instead of filename.pdf. A rare, legacy use case involves the obsolete Netmino address book software for iOS, but this is virtually non-existent in modern workflows.

Practical Constraints: Because the operating system does not recognize .GOV as a valid extension, double-clicking will likely trigger a "Windows cannot open this file" error.

Conversion & Recovery Recommendations:

For Documents (PDF): If the file size is substantial (e.g., >100KB), it is likely a PDF. You can often "convert" it simply by renaming the extension from .gov to pdf. For editing, convert the recovered PDF to DOCX using Adobe Acrobat.
For Web Archives: If the file was saved as a webpage, it is likely MHTML. Open it in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge and print to PDF for a shareable format.
For Archiving: Always convert these volatile, misnamed files to PDF/A to ensure long-term accessibility.

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

Users also converted I, FACES, WGX and GSV files.

FAQ

If you want to convert GOV file to GSV, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT or DB, you can use Google Chrome or similar software from the "Misnamed Government Document" 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 GOV, try Google Chrome or another comparable tool in the "Misnamed Government Document" category.

The GOV 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 GOV converter.