QUERY Converter

Extract text from Windows search files (QUERY)

Select File
Drop or upload your .QUERY file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your QUERY file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your QUERY file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert QUERY to another file type

To convert QUERY search files to another format, you need Microsoft Windows or other System software.

Convert a file to QUERY

To convert other file formats to the "Search Indexing File" file type, you need software like Microsoft Windows or a similar tool.

About QUERY files

The .QUERY file extension is primarily associated with the Windows Indexing Service and Windows Help and Support Center. Historically, these files stored saved search criteria, filters, or specific help queries used by the operating system to retrieve information rapidly. Because the Indexing Service has been largely superseded by modern Windows Search, these files are often encountered as legacy artifacts that no longer trigger the expected actions on Windows 10 or 11.

A secondary but significant use case (approx. 9%) involves Windows Registry data, where specific export tools or forensic utilities save hive query results or partial hive snapshots with this extension.

Why convert?
Users typically need to convert .QUERY files because they are effectively "orphaned" on modern systems. Double-clicking them often results in a "Windows cannot open this file" error or, worse, triggers a deprecated help window that fails to load content.

For Inspection: Converting to TXT is the most practical solution, as it strips away the system dependency and allows you to view the raw query parameters, search strings, or registry paths in any text editor.
For Developers: If the file contains Structured Query Language commands (common in informal developer usage), converting to SQL ensures syntax highlighting in editors like VS Code.
For Archiving: Converting to PDF preserves the query instructions in a universal, non-editable format.

Convert.Guru analyzes your QUERY file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted IQY, PBF, ANN, JQX, QRY, TABLE and JSON files.

FAQ

If you want to convert QUERY file to TABLE, JSON, DB, SQLITE, SQLITE3, MDB, ACCDB, DBF, ODB, FDB, GDB or MYD, you can use Microsoft Windows or similar software from the "Search Criteria Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert NDF, SQLITE3, BAK, RDB, SQL, DB4, MDF, MDB, LDF, DB, DB3 or SQLITE files to QUERY, try Microsoft Windows or another comparable tool in the "Search Criteria Storage" category.

The QUERY 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 QUERY converter.