Extract text from ArcGIS Explorer configuration files (NCFG)
To convert NCFG configuration files to another format, you need ArcGIS Explorer or other Settings software.
To convert other file formats to the "GIS Configuration File" file type, you need software like ArcGIS Explorer or a similar tool.
The .ncfg file is an ArcGIS Explorer Configuration File utilized by ArcGIS, a geographic information system (GIS) software developed by Esri. These files are designed to store user preferences, customized layouts, tool settings, and operational environments for the desktop application.
The main disadvantage of the .ncfg format is that it is strictly proprietary and tied to an outdated desktop software ecosystem. The file cannot be opened by standard web browsers, and it locks your customized environments behind specific GIS software. If you do not have the exact version of the software installed, you cannot easily read or reuse the configuration parameters.
Converting an .ncfg file to a standard document format like PDF or DOCX is generally impossible because the file contains application-specific parameters, not printable pages or media. The best conversion targets are plain text formats like TXT, XML, or JSON. Extracting the file to these formats allows you to read the underlying code and manually port your settings to modern GIS platforms.
Because this file is a specialized settings format, it is notoriously difficult to process. Often, only the original software can properly parse the layout rules. Standard online converters fail because they look for image or document data. Even if full conversion is blocked by binary encoding, our analysis can often inspect the file and extract the underlying readable text or XML parameters.
Convert.Guru analyzes your NCFG file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert NCFG file to , you can use ArcGIS Explorer or similar software from the "GIS Software Configuration" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to NCFG, try ArcGIS Explorer or another comparable tool in the "GIS Software Configuration" 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 NCFG converter.