Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PFF file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert PFF to another file type
To convert your PFF file to another format, you need Formatta Designer or other Page Layout software.
Convert a file to PFF
To convert other file formats to the "Electronic Form Document" file type, you need software like Formatta Designer or a similar tool.
About PFF files
A .pff file is most frequently a Formatta Portable Form File, a proprietary electronic form format historically used for secure government and enterprise data collection. These files package the form's visual layout, field logic, and encryption into a single container. Unlike standard PDF documents, .pff files are strictly proprietary and cannot be opened by web browsers or Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is often frustrating, as users must install the specific Formatta Filler software just to view the content. For archiving or sharing, the ideal workflow is converting these forms to PDF for visual fidelity or XML to extract the underlying data fields. Less commonly, a .pff file may be a CSPro Packet File (used by the U.S. Census Bureau for survey management), which is a plain text file editable with any text editor, or a game resource archive for titles like Star Trek: Armada.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PFF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert PFF file to INDD, QXP, PUB, PMD, PM6, PM7, PM8, PM9, PM10, PM11, OMP or P65, you can use Formatta Designer or similar software from the "Electronic Form Submission" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MDI, PUB, PDP, PM4, P65, COMIC, WEBTEMPLATE, PMD, SPUB, INDD, PM5 or QXP files to PFF, try Formatta Designer or another comparable tool in the "Electronic Form Submission" category.
The PFF Converter Story
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 PFF converter.