Extract text from TMW files
To convert your TMW file to another format, you need Trados Studio or other Database software.
To convert other file formats to the "Translation Assets" file type, you need software like Trados Studio or a similar tool.
A .tmw file is a legacy translation memory database created by older versions of SDL Trados (specifically the Translator's Workbench), the industry-standard software for computer-assisted translation (CAT). These files store matched pairs of source and target language segments to help translators reuse previous work.
Because .tmw is a pre-2009 binary format, it presents significant hurdles for modern workflows. It is proprietary and cannot be opened by standard text editors or browsers. A critical drawback is that a .tmw file is merely the header of a five-file database system; it relies on the presence of matching mdf, mtf, mwf, and iix files in the same directory. Without these dependencies, the .tmw is often unreadable. Furthermore, modern tools like Phrase or current versions of Trados Studio do not support direct editing of this format, requiring a migration process.
To preserve your linguistic assets, the best practice is to convert .tmw files to TMX (Translation Memory eXchange), an open XML standard compatible with virtually all modern CAT tools including MemoQ and Wordfast. For archiving, auditing, or simple viewing without specialized software, converting to XLSX or CSV allows you to manage the translation units in a spreadsheet.
Convert.Guru analyzes your TMW file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert TMW file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use Trados Studio or similar software from the "Translation Memory 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 TMW, try Trados Studio or another comparable tool in the "Translation Memory 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 TMW converter.