Extract text from ArcInfo index files (NIT)
To convert NIT index files to another format, you need ArcGIS or other GIS software.
To convert other file formats to the "Spatial Data and Imagery" file type, you need software like ArcGIS or a similar tool.
A .nit file typically stores geospatial imagery formatted as the National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF), or serves as a coverage index and data file for ESRI ArcGIS. In some cases, it also functions as a CAD data transfer file for Nemetschek Allplan.
These files are heavily utilized by government agencies, military intelligence, and professional cartographers. You usually need specialized software like ArcGIS or advanced open-source alternatives like QGIS to open and interpret the spatial data accurately.
The .nit format has significant disadvantages for standard users. It is highly complex, often proprietary, and files regularly exceed gigabytes in size due to raw satellite imagery. It requires high-end hardware and costly software subscriptions to view. Furthermore, web browsers and default operating system image viewers cannot display .nit files at all.
For general sharing, you must convert .nit to TIFF (ideally GeoTIFF) to retain map coordinates, or JPG for simple visual review. If the file is an ArcInfo index or coverage file, converting to modern vector formats like SHP (Shapefile) or KML is recommended. Note that converting to standard formats will permanently strip out specialized intelligence or indexing metadata.
Because this is a closed, proprietary, and highly specialized GIS format, standard online converters fail to process it. They simply lack the geospatial libraries required to parse the spatial grids. This file format is notoriously difficult to open or convert, and often only the original software can properly read or export the data. Just drag and drop your file to convert.guru to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your NIT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted NTS, SBX, CPG, GDBTABLE and LUX files.
If you want to convert NIT file to LUX, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT or DB, you can use ArcGIS or similar software from the "Geospatial Imagery and Data" 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 NIT, try ArcGIS or another comparable tool in the "Geospatial Imagery and Data" 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 NIT converter.