The File Formats Handbook

A resource for programmers, consultants, researchers and students in the field of graphics and file formats.

Each applications program uses its own vendor-specific format to store data.

End-users demand that programs accept data files that may have been created by totally different and sometimes competing programs.

Software developers in particular depend on the file format information of different applications programs to implement advanced import and export functions.

Unfortunately, most of the information is confidential, not well documented, or not available for public use.

This handbook uncovers the file formats used by popular software products in the areas of databases, spreadsheets, word processing, graphics, sound and multimedia.