Extract text from Visual Studio files (REFRESH)
To convert REFRESH files to another format, you need Microsoft Visual Studio or other Developer software.
To convert other file formats to the "ASP.NET Reference File" file type, you need software like Microsoft Visual Studio or a similar tool.
A .refresh file is a plain text configuration document used by Microsoft Visual Studio within legacy ASP.NET Web Site projects. It stores the relative physical path to an external referenced assembly, usually a DLL file. When developers add an external library reference, the IDE creates this file in the project's Bin directory to automatically 'refresh' or copy the latest version of the dependency during a build process.
The main disadvantage of this format is its fragility. It heavily relies on local directory structures. If you clone a repository and the target DLL does not exist at the exact relative path specified inside the file, your project build will fail immediately. Furthermore, because it uses an obscure, developer-specific extension, standard operating systems do not know how to open it, and generic online converters reject it outright.
Since it contains only a short string of plain text, the best conversion target is TXT. Converting it to a standard text format makes the internal path readable on any device, entirely removing the need to install a massive IDE just to see what library is missing.
This file format is difficult to handle because standard conversion engines look for complex document headers and fail when they find a raw text string.
Convert.Guru analyzes your REFRESH file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert REFRESH file to JS, TS, PY, JAVA, CPP, C, CS, PHP, RB, GO, RS or SWIFT, you can use Microsoft Visual Studio or similar software from the "DLL Dependency Path Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert SH, PY, KT, PS1, SWIFT, LUA, PL, JAVA, SCALA, JS, VBS or TS files to REFRESH, try Microsoft Visual Studio or another comparable tool in the "DLL Dependency Path Storage" 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 REFRESH converter.