Extract text from SDF files
To convert your SDF file to another format, you need Microsoft SQL Server or other Database software.
To convert other file formats to the "Compact Database" file type, you need software like Microsoft SQL Server or a similar tool.
SDF (SQL Server Compact Database File) is a legacy file format used by Microsoft for lightweight, embedded database applications. While popular in the 2000s for desktop and mobile apps, Microsoft SQL Server Compact reached its end of life in 2021. This presents a significant challenge: newer versions of Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio no longer support opening or editing these files natively. Users are often left with critical data locked inside a binary format that requires installing obsolete runtimes just to view.
To future-proof your data, the best course of action is converting the database schema and data into open, accessible formats. For database migration, converting .SDF to SQL scripts or SQLite databases ensures compatibility with modern applications. For data analysis, exporting tables to CSV allows for immediate use in Microsoft Excel.
Note on Chemical Files: The .SDF extension is also widely used in cheminformatics as a Structure-Data File. These are text-based files wrapping multiple MOL records to represent chemical structures and associated data. While efficient for specialized software like BIOVIA Draw, they are unreadable to standard document viewers. For reports and publications, converting these to PDF or standard image formats like PNG is recommended.
Convert.Guru analyzes your SDF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted SFD, SDFDATA, SDIF, ZIP, SDFA, MOL2, PDF, SDFS, SDFZ, MOL, TXT, CSV and JPG files.
If you want to convert SDF file to PDB, PDF, CSV, SHP, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG or CONF, you can use Microsoft SQL Server or similar software from the "Embedded Relational Database" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to SDF, try Microsoft SQL Server or another comparable tool in the "Embedded Relational Database" 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 SDF converter.