Extract text from LimeSurvey question groups (LSG)
To convert LSG question groups to another format, you need LimeSurvey or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Survey Data File" file type, you need software like LimeSurvey or a similar tool.
The .lsg file is a LimeSurvey Question Group file. It is used to export and import specific blocks of questions within survey projects. Researchers and marketers use this file to share standardized question sets across different surveys without recreating them from scratch.
Users manage and open these files directly within the LimeSurvey web administration interface. Under the hood, the file uses a standard XML structure to store the question text, answer options, and conditional logic.
Users often need to convert .lsg files because the format is entirely isolated to the LimeSurvey ecosystem. It is highly proprietary in its schema. You cannot open it natively in Microsoft Excel to view a clean list of questions. The raw XML tags make the text very difficult for non-technical users to read. Furthermore, you cannot import this file into competing survey platforms like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics.
To view the data outside of the survey platform, the best target formats are XML, CSV, or TXT. Converting to CSV allows you to read the questions in a spreadsheet, but you will lose the complex survey logic, routing rules, and internal application settings.
This file format is difficult to convert perfectly because the structural logic is unique to the original software. Often, only LimeSurvey can properly read or export the functional survey data. However, standard online converters fail to process it mainly because they do not recognize the custom extension.
Convert.Guru analyzes your LSG file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted LSS, LSA, TXT, LSQ and EUS files.
If you want to convert LSG file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use LimeSurvey or similar software from the "Survey Question Group Storage" 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 LSG, try LimeSurvey or another comparable tool in the "Survey Question Group 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 LSG converter.