130 legacy formats · no account needed

Open any old file.

Drop a file from an old computer, floppy disk or forgotten email. We tell you exactly what it is, then turn it into something you can open today.

Drop any old file here

or click to browse. One file at a time, up to 500 MB.

Your file is processed in a private workspace and deleted after 3 hours.

Identified from the bytes, not the name
Files deleted after 3 hours
No sign-up, no install

What we open

Every kind of file a 1990s PC or Mac could make.

Pick the family your file belongs to, or just drop it above and let the detector decide.

How it works

Three steps, no guesswork.

01
Identify
We read the first bytes and internal structure of the file and match it against our catalog of dead formats, telling you the program, vendor and era it came from.
02
Convert
Choose a modern target (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PNG, MP4, MP3, EML...) and the right engine does the work: LibreOffice, ffmpeg, Ghostscript, mdbtools, readpst and friends.
03
Download
Grab the result, read the honest notes about what survived the conversion, and move on with your day. The upload is wiped automatically.

Drive Rescue

Found a whole drive of old files? Rescue all of it at once.

Zip the folder, upload it, and we identify every file, convert everything we can to modern formats, keep the rest untouched and hand back the same folder structure with a report of what each file was.

Start a rescue

letters/grandma-1994.wpd → grandma-1994.pdf
budget/1997.wk1 → 1997.xlsx
photos/holiday.pcx → holiday.png
mail/outlook.pst → outlook-eml.zip
scans/invoice.max → identified, how-to-open included

Questions

Frequently asked.

What counts as an "old file"?

Anything today's software refuses to open: WordPerfect and Works documents, Lotus 1-2-3 sheets, Publisher layouts, Access databases, Outlook PST mailboxes, RealMedia and Flash video, PCX and PICT images, DjVu scans, floppy images, WordStar text and many more. Browse the full catalog for the complete list.

How do you know what a file is if the extension is wrong or missing?

We read the file's bytes. Most formats start with a unique signature; container formats like OLE and ZIP are opened and inspected so a .wps is told apart from a .pub or a .msg. Only when nothing matches do we fall back to the extension, and we say so.

Is my file private?

Your file is uploaded to an isolated workspace on our servers, processed, and deleted automatically after 3 hours. There are no accounts and we do not look at your content.

Why can some formats only be identified, not converted?

For a handful of formats (PaperPort .max, Microsoft Document Imaging .mdi, Outlook Express .dbx, encrypted e-books) no open-source decoder exists. We still tell you exactly what the file is and which programs will open it.

Is it free?

Single-file identification and conversion is free. Drive Rescue, which processes an entire folder at once, is free while in beta.

Not sure where to start? Identify a file – it takes a second.

Open any old file.

Identify

Convert

Download

Found a whole drive of old files? Rescue all of it at once.