Extract text from PLW files
To convert your PLW file to another format, you need PicoLog or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Data Acquisition Log" file type, you need software like PicoLog or a similar tool.
The .PLW file extension is primarily a legacy binary data container used by PicoLog 5 (PicoLog for Windows), a data acquisition suite developed by Pico Technology. These files store raw time-series voltage, current, or temperature data captured by Pico data loggers and oscilloscopes.
Because the .PLW format is proprietary and designed for the older, 32-bit PicoLog 5 architecture, modern workflows often hit a wall. You cannot double-click to open these in standard spreadsheet tools like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, and even the newer PicoLog 6 software requires a specific import process to read them. This "format lock" makes sharing data with colleagues or analyzing it in Python/MATLAB difficult without conversion.
To liberate your data, the best strategy is converting .PLW to CSV (Comma Separated Values) for universal compatibility with spreadsheet software and scientific analysis tools. For archiving or read-only sharing, converting to PDF ensures the waveform visual representations remain intact. In rare cases, a .PLW file might be a 32-bit plugin for IDA Pro, an interactive disassembler; these are executable binaries and should not be converted to text formats.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PLW file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted PICOLOG, PL and CSV 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 PLW converter.