Convert DBF files
Upload a .dbf file and convert it to any of 8 targets. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.
Click to upload or drag and drop
CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)
Every DBF conversion
Also known as
Working from a FoxPro table
FoxPro extended the dBase file layout with types dBase never had, and gave its memo files a different format and a different extension. Both of those differences change what comes out the other side, and both are read from the file.
Working from a dBase file
dBase III and IV gave the format its five original field types, and that small vocabulary is why a dBase table converts so cleanly: there is very little in one that a modern database cannot hold exactly.
Working from an xBase table
xBase is the family name for the record layout dBase defined and Clipper, FoxBase and FoxPro adopted. A file from any of them opens here; the differences live in the header bytes, and those are read rather than assumed.
Reading DBF
- →Numeric fields with decimals are read as exact decimals, not floats, so currency does not drift.
- →Character field widths are read from the header and carried into the target.
- →The code page declared in the file header is used, so Cyrillic, Western European and other legacy DOS encodings decode correctly instead of turning into mojibake. 157 code pages are recognised.
- →Files written by dBase III or Clipper declare no code page at all — the header byte for it did not exist yet. For those, the most plausible encoding is chosen by inspecting the text, and the conversion tells you it had to guess. The API takes a sourceEncoding parameter (e.g. cp866) to force it instead of guessing, though the widget above does not have a control for it yet.
- →Memo columns keep their text in a separate .dbt or .fpt file. If the .dbf declares one and it was not uploaded, the conversion stops and tells you which file to add, rather than handing you a table whose long text is silently blank.