WCI Converter

Extract text from Nautical chart indexes (WCI)


Drop or upload your .WCI file
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How to extract text from your WCI file

  1. Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your WCI file.
  2. You’ll see a preview, if available.
  3. Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert WCI to another file type

To convert WCI Chart indexes to another format, you need MaxSea TimeZero or other GIS software.

Convert a file to WCI

To convert other file formats to the "Marine Navigation Index File" file type, you need software like MaxSea TimeZero or a similar tool.


About WCI files

A .wci file is a Nautical Chart Index used by marine navigation systems. These files serve as catalogs or spatial indexes for digital charts, commonly generated by Transas Marine (now Wärtsilä) or Maptech. Software like MaxSea TimeZero uses .wci files to quickly load and organize massive libraries of raster or vector charts (such as BSB or KAP). The format is heavily restricted. It is a proprietary index, meaning it is completely unreadable without specialized, expensive marine navigation software. Furthermore, a .wci file does not contain the actual map graphics, only the metadata and file paths. Users often struggle to view this catalog data on standard computers or web browsers. Converting .wci to CSV, XML, or TXT is highly requested by users who just need to read the chart catalog list or extract spatial coordinates. However, expect to lose any proprietary software-specific linking. Because this is a closed, proprietary format designed for dedicated chartplotters, standard online converters fail to process it. Often only the original navigation software can properly read or export the data. If our analysis detects a supported underlying plain-text metadata structure, viewing or conversion may still be possible.

Convert.Guru analyzes your WCI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted CLG, EXE and XML files.


FAQ

If you want to convert WCI file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use MaxSea TimeZero or similar software from the "Nautical Chart Cataloging" 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 WCI, try MaxSea TimeZero or another comparable tool in the "Nautical Chart Cataloging" category.



The WCI 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 WCI converter.