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What is a .dbf file?
A .dbf file was the file format of dBase (published 1980), one of the first database systems for personal computers and for years the most successful one. Other programs used the format too, such as FoxPro, Visual FoxPro and Clipper, and many programs used it to store their data. It is still used today in some niches: for example, shapefiles store their GIS data in .dbf files.
Each .dbf file holds one table. Long texts (memo fields) are stored in an extra file with the same name: .dbt (dBase) or .fpt (FoxPro).
And what is this service good for?
Some programs can still open .dbf files, such as LibreOffice. But fewer and fewer do, and phones and tablets can't open them at all. DBFopener.com opens them in the browser, without installing an app.
What do I get?
- The list of tables with their number of rows, and the first 100 rows of each table on the result page.
- All tables as one Excel file (.xlsx), one sheet per table. Numbers and dates are real numbers and dates in Excel.
- Each table as a CSV file (UTF-8, comma-separated), and with several tables all of them as a ZIP.
- All tables as an SQLite database, and as SQL dumps for MySQL/MariaDB and PostgreSQL: CREATE TABLE with the column types, then the rows. Empty values become NULL. The dumps don't delete existing tables: import them into a new, empty database.
Deleted records (marked as deleted, but still in the file) are left out. Pictures and other binary data (OLE objects) are left empty. Index files (.ndx, .mdx, .cdx) aren't needed.
Memo files and several tables
To get the memo fields, put the .dbf and its .dbt or .fpt file into a ZIP and upload the ZIP. A ZIP can hold several .dbf files (e.g. the folder of a FoxPro database): you get one table for each.
Character sets
Most .dbf files name their character set, and it is used. Old files that don't are read as DOS (Western Europe), Visual FoxPro files as Windows (Western Europe). If letters like ä, é or ñ look wrong, choose another character set below the upload before you choose the file.
Limits
You can upload files of up to 100 MB. An Excel sheet holds at most 1,048,576 rows: for larger tables, and for very large files, there is no Excel file, only the CSV files.