Extract text from Mac web archives (WAFF)
To convert WAFF web archives to another format, you need Internet Explorer for Mac or other Web software.
To convert other file formats to the "Mac Web Archive" file type, you need software like Internet Explorer for Mac or a similar tool.
A .waff file is an obsolete web archive format created by Internet Explorer for Mac, an abandoned web browser developed by Microsoft. It stores a complete webpage, including raw HTML code and embedded images, inside a single file for offline viewing.
Historically, these files were opened using Internet Explorer on Mac OS 9 and early versions of Mac OS X. This format is now completely obsolete. Microsoft halted development of Internet Explorer for Mac in 2003. Modern web browsers like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox cannot read .waff files. The format is closed, proprietary, and practically useless on modern operating systems without specialized data extraction tools.
To access the data today, you need to convert these files to standard HTML to view the raw text, or PDF to create a static, accessible document. You may also need to extract embedded assets like JPG or PNG files. Note that because the original rendering engine is dead, complex page layouts and CSS styling will likely break during conversion.
Because this is an undocumented, proprietary legacy format, standard online converters often fail to process it. Even if the file is stubborn, our analysis tools can inspect the file, show internal text, and if an underlying supported format is detected, viewing or extraction of the embedded media may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your WAFF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert WAFF file to ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, LZMA, CAB, ACE, ARJ or LHA, you can use Internet Explorer for Mac or similar software from the "Web Archive Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert XXE, 7Z, Z, PAK, LHA, DEB, UUE, TAR, LZH, ZIP, PKG or RAR files to WAFF, try Internet Explorer for Mac or another comparable tool in the "Web Archive 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 WAFF converter.