Extract text from PBN files
To convert your PBN file to another format, you need BridgeComposer or other Game software.
To convert other file formats to the "Contract Bridge Record" file type, you need software like BridgeComposer or a similar tool.
The .PBN file type is the global standard for Portable Bridge Notation, a text-based format designed to record Contract Bridge games. It captures every detail of a session, including the deal (card distribution), bidding sequences, play of the cards, and metadata like player names, event location, and results. While the format is technically human-readable ASCII text, interpreting a raw .PBN file is visually exhausting and impractical for analyzing a hand or reviewing a tournament.
Users typically convert .PBN files because they need to visualize the game in a graphical interface or prepare materials for a bridge club. The raw text lacks the visual "hand diagram" layout that players are used to. To share results with club members who don't have specialized software like BridgeComposer or Bridgemate, the best approach is converting to PDF. This generates printable "hand records" often seen at tournaments. For publishing results to a club website, converting to HTML is ideal. If you are moving data to online platforms like Bridge Base Online, you may need to convert .PBN to the LIN format.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PBN file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted DUP, LIN, BPN, SVG, PNG, DLM, PDB, ZIP, TXT, EXE, JPG and PDF files.
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 PBN converter.