Extract text from Archived automation projects (ZAP13)
To convert ZAP13 Archived projects to another format, you need Siemens TIA Portal or other Compressed software.
To convert other file formats to the "Siemens Project Archive" file type, you need software like Siemens TIA Portal or a similar tool.
The .ZAP13 file format is an archived automation project used exclusively by Siemens TIA Portal v13. Industrial engineers use it to backup, transfer, and share Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) logic, Human Machine Interface (HMI) screens, and factory hardware configurations in a compressed format.
Opening a .ZAP13 file natively requires a licensed installation of Siemens TIA Portal. This presents a major disadvantage for users without the software: the ecosystem is highly proprietary, the required licenses are very expensive, and the software enforces notoriously strict version compatibility. You cannot natively open a v13 project in older software, and opening it in newer versions (like v15 or v16) often triggers a complex, failure-prone migration process.
Because the format is essentially a renamed ZIP archive, the most pragmatic conversion target is ZIP. Extracting the archive will give you access to the underlying .AP13 project file and various internal XML configurations. However, converting the actual PLC logic directly into a universal document format like PDF or DOCX is impossible without using the original Siemens software to generate project documentation.
This closed database architecture is exactly why standard online converters fail to process it. If our analysis detects supported underlying text or XML files within the project, viewing or converting those specific components may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ZAP13 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ZAP, FWF, ZAP16 and ZAP14 files.
If you want to convert ZAP13 file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use Siemens TIA Portal or similar software from the "Automation Project Archive" 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 ZAP13, try Siemens TIA Portal or another comparable tool in the "Automation Project Archive" 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 ZAP13 converter.