Extract text from MSW files
To convert your MSW file to another format, you need SIL FieldWorks or other Text software.
To convert other file formats to the "Legacy Data Container" file type, you need software like SIL FieldWorks or a similar tool.
The .MSW extension is a classic example of file format collision, serving three distinct, incompatible purposes depending on the era and industry. Most commonly, it represents a Linguistic Analysis Database created by SIL FieldWorks (formerly Shoebox/Toolbox), used by anthropologists to store lexicon data and interlinear text. These files are effectively proprietary text databases; without the original software, your research data is locked away in an unreadable format. Users often need to convert these to XML, TXT, or CSV to migrate data into modern tools like FLEx.
Simultaneously, .MSW files are widely found in civil engineering as Structural Analysis Models generated by Bentley Microstran. These contain critical load and geometry data for steel structures. Sharing these requires the recipient to have an expensive Microstran license, making conversion to DXF (for AutoCAD) or PDF (for client review) a standard workflow necessity.
Finally, if you are digging through archives from the early 1990s, an .MSW file might be a pre-historic Microsoft Word document (versions 2.x to 5.x) or a Microsoft Works text file. Modern versions of Microsoft Word frequently block these legacy formats for security reasons or simply fail to render them correctly, necessitating conversion to modern DOCX or PDF/A for long-term archiving.
Convert.Guru analyzes your MSW file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted DOCX, DOC, PDF, DYN, GEF, PHC, JPG and PSI files.
If you want to convert MSW file to PDF, JPG, PSI, INI, CFG, CONF, CONFIG, JSON, XML, YAML, YML or TOML, you can use SIL FieldWorks or similar software from the "Linguistic Data & Structural Models" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert ZSHRC, CONF, RCFILE, GITCONFIG, RC, PLIST, BASHRC, CONFIG, PROFILE, INI, PREFS or CFG files to MSW, try SIL FieldWorks or another comparable tool in the "Linguistic Data & Structural Models" 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 MSW converter.