Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your Z5 file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert Z5 to another file type
To convert your Z5 file to another format, you need Frotz or other Game software.
Convert a file to Z5
To convert other file formats to the "Interactive Fiction" file type, you need software like Frotz or a similar tool.
About Z5 files
A .z5 file is a compiled interactive fiction story file designed for the Z-machine, a virtual machine architecture originally developed by Infocom in the 1980s. While Version 5 is the most common format for text adventures created with Inform, these files are strictly binary containers holding game logic, text, and vocabulary trees. They are not human-readable and cannot be opened in standard text editors like Notepad or Microsoft Word without seeing garbled data. Because the format relies on a specific interpreter environment, users often struggle to share these games with players who lack technical know-how. To make a .z5 file accessible to a modern audience without requiring them to install software like Frotz, the best workflow is to convert the file to HTML using a wrapper like Parchment. For developers needing to analyze the game's script, decompiling to TXT or INF (Inform source code) is possible using tools like ZTools, though the resulting code often lacks original variable names and comments.
Convert.Guru analyzes your Z5 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ZLORB, Z#, PACKAGE and Z4 files.
FAQ
If you want to convert Z5 file to EXE, ISO, BIN, CUE, PAK, WAD, PK3, PK4, BSP, MAP, SAV or DAT, you can use Frotz or similar software from the "Interactive Fiction Game Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MOD, BIN, CFG, SCX, DAT, MPQ, LOG, CUE, INI, EXE, SCM or ISO files to Z5, try Frotz or another comparable tool in the "Interactive Fiction Game Data" category.
The Z5 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 Z5 converter.