Extract text from Inform projects (INFORM)
To convert INFORM projects to another format, you need Inform 7 or other Developer software.
To convert other file formats to the "Interactive Fiction Project" file type, you need software like Inform 7 or a similar tool.
The .inform file format is a project package used by Inform 7, a popular natural-language design system for interactive fiction created by Graham Nelson. This file stores the developer's source text, project settings, and compiled game data. It is primarily managed and edited using the native Inform 7 IDE.
The main disadvantage of the .inform format is its underlying structure: on macOS, it acts as a bundled package, while on Windows, it behaves exactly like a standard directory folder. This causes significant frustration for users trying to share their source code, as web browsers and standard text editors cannot open the package directly without drilling down into its internal Source folder to locate the story.ni text file. Standard online converters completely fail to process .inform files because they expect a single, flat document rather than a complex nested project tree.
To make the game playable, users typically need to compile the project into interactive fiction runtime formats like ULX (Glulx) or Z8 (Z-Machine). If you just want the code, extracting it as a standard TXT file is the best conversion target. Because this is a specialized project package, it is difficult to open or convert correctly without the original software. If our analysis detects the embedded source code, viewing or extraction may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your INFORM file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert INFORM file to , you can use Inform 7 or similar software from the "Interactive Fiction Project Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to INFORM, try Inform 7 or another comparable tool in the "Interactive Fiction Project Storage" category.
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 INFORM converter.