Extract text from Ami Pro documents (SAM)
To convert SAM documents to another format, you need Samtools / Ami Pro or other Text software.
To convert other file formats to the "Genomics Data & Legacy Document" file type, you need software like Samtools / Ami Pro or a similar tool.
The .SAM file extension serves two entirely different primary purposes. Historically, it was the proprietary document format for Ami Pro, a popular 1990s word processor later acquired by IBM and rebranded as Lotus Word Pro. In modern computing, .SAM stands for Sequence Alignment/Map, an uncompressed, human-readable text format heavily used in bioinformatics to store biological sequences aligned to a reference genome.
For legacy document handling, users originally relied on Ami Pro or older versions of Microsoft Word that still retained legacy text conversion filters. For genomics, professionals use specific command-line software suites like Samtools or BWA to map and interact with the data.
Users face serious disadvantages with both versions of this format. Ami Pro documents are severely outdated and proprietary. Modern word processors reject them natively, meaning you cannot read historical data without jumping through frustrating hoops or tracking down unsupported legacy software. Conversely, genomics .SAM files are uncompressed and notoriously massive, routinely exceeding 100GB per file. They easily crash standard text editors and consume expensive cloud storage space.
To solve these issues, you must convert legacy .SAM documents to standard formats like DOCX, RTF, or PDF to guarantee long-term readability, though some strict legacy formatting elements may be lost. Genomics .SAM files should always be converted into their compressed binary counterparts, BAM or CRAM, to drastically reduce disk usage and speed up bioinformatics queries.
Both variations of this file format are difficult to open for average users. Legacy documents use closed, proprietary rendering structures, meaning standard online converters fail to process them. Genomics files are simply too large for basic text rendering. Just drag and drop your file to convert.guru to identify the exact format, view the raw extracted text, and convert it when possible. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Use Convert.Guru to open and convert your SAM file.
Users also converted SYSTEM, SECURITY, LOG1, LWP, DEFAULT, AYYAN, SAVE, WK4, DOC, SRW, PDF, JPG and ZIP files.
If you want to convert SAM file to TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX, ODT, PAGES, TEX, LATEX, MD, MARKDOWN, LOG or NFO, you can use Samtools / Ami Pro or similar software from the "Genomics Data & Word Processing" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert PDF, DOC, ASC, TODO, NFO, MEMO, README, DOCX, JPG, TXT, NOTE or RTF files to SAM, try Samtools / Ami Pro or another comparable tool in the "Genomics Data & Word Processing" 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 SAM converter.