Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your VBK file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert VBK to another file type
To convert VBK files to another format, you need VitalSource Bookshelf or other E-Book software.
Convert a file to VBK
To convert other file formats to the "Proprietary Digital Textbook" file type, you need software like VitalSource Bookshelf or a similar tool.
About VBK files
The .VBK file extension is primarily used for VitalSource digital textbooks or Veeam virtual machine full backups. VitalSource uses this proprietary format to distribute encrypted e-books to students. Alternatively, enterprise IT environments encounter .VBK files as massive, deduplicated backup archives. A much smaller fraction of these files represents legacy Nortel voice messages. To open the e-book version, you must use VitalSource Bookshelf. To restore a virtual machine backup, you need Veeam Backup & Replication. Users frequently want to convert .VBK textbooks because the native format is highly restrictive. It ties the user to a specific proprietary reader application, lacks universal browser support, and employs strict Digital Rights Management (DRM) to prevent offline reading on unauthorized devices. The backup version has its own drawbacks: files are typically hundreds of gigabytes, heavily compressed, and completely unreadable without an active Veeam server. For textbooks, the ideal target format is PDF or EPUB, allowing universally accessible reading on standard tablet readers. However, DRM removal is legally restricted and often results in losing interactive media elements. For Veeam backups, IT administrators typically want to extract the raw VMDK (VMware) or VHD (Hyper-V) disk images rather than convert the archive. Because .VBK files are proprietary and often encrypted, standard online converters fail to process them. They are deliberately difficult to open or convert; usually, only the original software can properly read or export the data.
Convert.Guru analyzes your VBK file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert VBK file to PDF, VMDK, EPUB, OVA, VHD, OVF, ISO, BAK, BACKUP, OLD, TMP or TEMP, you can use VitalSource Bookshelf or similar software from the "Digital Textbook or VM Backup" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert SNAPSHOT, OLD, IMG, RESTORE, ISO, COPY, VMDK, TMP, VHD, BAK, ARCHIVE or BACKUP files to VBK, try VitalSource Bookshelf or another comparable tool in the "Digital Textbook or VM Backup" category.
The VBK 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 VBK converter.