File Content Extraction 26.2
Viewing SDK Programming Guide

# Multibyte and Bidirectional Support

File Content Extraction can process files that contain multibyte characters. A multibyte character encoding represents a single character with consecutive bytes. File Content Extraction can also process text from files that contain bidirectional text. Bidirectional text contains both Latin-based text which is read from left to right, and text that is read from right to left (Hebrew and Arabic).

The following table indicates which character encodings are supported for each format.

Multibyte and bidirectional support

Format | Single-byte | Multibyte | Bidirectional
--- | --- | --- | ---
Archive
7-Zip (7Z) | n/a | n/a | n/a
AD1 Evidence file | n/a | n/a | n/a
ADJ | n/a | n/a | n/a
B1 | n/a | n/a | n/a
BinHex (HQX) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Bzip2 (BZ2) | n/a | n/a | n/a
EnCase – Expert Witness Compression Format (E01) | n/a | n/a | n/a
GZIP (GZ) | n/a | n/a | n/a
ISO (ISO) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Java Archive (JAR) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Legato EMailXtender Archive (EMX) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MacBinary (BIN) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Mac Disk Copy Disk Image (DMG) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Backup File (BKF) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Cabinet format (CAB) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Compressed Folder (LZH) | n/a | n/a | n/a
PKZip (ZIP) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Outlook DBX (DBX) | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook Offline Storage File (OST) | Y | Y | Y
RAR Archive (RAR) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Tape Archive (TAR) | n/a | n/a | n/a
UNIX Compress (Z) | n/a | n/a | n/a
UUEncoding (UUE) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Windows Scrap File (SHS) | n/a | n/a | n/a
WinZip (ZIP) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Binary
Executable (EXE) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Link Library (DLL) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Computer-aided Design
AutoCAD Drawing (DWG) | Y | Y | Y
AutoCAD Drawing Exchange (DXF) | Y | Y | Y
CATIA formats (CAT) | Y | N | N
Microsoft Visio (VSD) | Y | Y | Y
Database
dBase Database | Y | N | N
Microsoft Access (MDB) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft Project (MPP) | Y | Y | N
Desktop Publishing
Microsoft Publisher | N | Y | N
Display
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) (basic reader) | Y | Y1 Multibyte PDFs are supported, provided the PDF document is created by using either Character ID-keyed (CID) fonts, predefined CJK CMap files, or ToUnicode font encodings, and does not contain embedded fonts. See the Adobe website and the Adobe Acrobat documentation for more information. Any multibyte characters that are not supported are displayed using the replacement character. By default, the replacement character is a question mark (?).To determine the type of font encodings that are used in a PDF, open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat, and select File > Document Info > Fonts. If the Encoding column lists Custom or Embedded encodings, you might encounter problems converting the PDF. | Y
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) (graphic-based reader) | Y | Y1 | Y
Graphics
Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) | Y | N | N
Corel DRAW (CDR) | n/a | n/a | n/a
DCX Fax System (DCX) | Y | N | N
DICOM – Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DCM) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) | Y | N | N
Enhanced Metafile (EMF) | Y | Y | N
Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) | n/a | n/a | n/a
JBIG2 | n/a | n/a | n/a
JPEG | n/a | n/a | n/a
JPEG 2000 | n/a | n/a | n/a
Lotus AMIDraw Graphics (SDW) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Lotus Pic (PIC) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Macintosh Raster (PICT/PCT) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MacPaint (PNTG) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Office Drawing (MSO) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Omni Graffle (GRAFFLE) | Y | N | N
PC PaintBrush (PCX) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Portable Network Graphics (PNG) | n/a | n/a | n/a
SGI RGB Image (RGB) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Sun Raster Image (RS) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Tagged Image File (TIFF) | Y | N | N
Truevision Targa (TGA) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Windows Animated Cursor (ANI) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Windows Bitmap (BMP) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Windows Icon Cursor (ICO) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Windows Metafile (WMF) | Y | Y | N
WordPerfect Graphics 1 (WPG) | Y | N | N
WordPerfect Graphics 2 (WPG) | Y | N | N
Mail
Documentum EMCMF Format | Y | Y | Y
Domino XML Language (DXL) | Y | Y | N
GroupWise FileSurf | Y | N | N
Legato Extender (ONM) | Y | Y | N
Lotus Notes database (NSF) | Y | Y | Y
Mailbox (MBX) | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Entourage Database | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook (MSG) | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook Express (EML) | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook iCalendar | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook for Macintosh | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook Offline Storage File | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook Personal File Folders (PST) | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Outlook vCard Contact |  |  |
Text Mail (MIME) | Y | Y | Y
Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format | Y | Y | Y
Multimedia
Advanced Systems Format (ASF) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Microsoft Wave Sound (WAV) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MIDI (MID) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MPEG 1 Video (MPG) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MPEG 2 Audio (MPEGA) | n/a | n/a | n/a
MPEG 4 Audio (MP4) | n/a | n/a | n/a
NeXT/Sun Audio (AU) | n/a | n/a | n/a
QuickTime Movie (QT/MOV) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Windows Video (AVI) | n/a | n/a | n/a
Presentations
Apple iWork Keynote (GZ) | Y | Y | N
Applix Presents (AG) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Corel Presentations (SHW) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Extensible Forms Description Language (XFD) | Y | Y | N
Lotus Freelance Graphics 2 (PRE) | character set 850 only | N | N
Lotus Freelance Graphics (PRZ) | Y | Japanese, Simple Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai only | N
Macromedia Flash (SWF) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft OneNote | Y | Y | N
Microsoft PowerPoint PC (PPT) | character set 1252 only | Traditional Chinese only | N
Microsoft PowerPoint Windows (PPT) | Y | Japanese, Simple Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean only | Hebrew only
Microsoft PowerPoint Macintosh (PPT) | Y | N | N
Microsoft PowerPoint Windows XML 2007 and 2010 (PPTX) | Y | Y | Y
OASIS Open Document (ODP) | Y | Y | N
OpenOffice Impress (ODP) | Y | Y | N
StarOffice Impress (ODP) | Y | Y | N
Spreadsheets
Apple iWork Numbers (GZ) | Y | Y | N
Applix Spreadsheets (AS) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Comma Separated Values (CSV) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Corel Quattro Pro (QPW/WB3) | Y | N | N
Data Interchange Format (DIF) | Y | Y | Y2 The text direction in the output file might not be correct.
Lotus 1-2-3 (123) | Y | Y | Y
Lotus 1-2-3 (WK4) | Y | Y | N
Lotus 123 Charts (123) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft Excel Charts (XLS) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft Excel Macintosh (XLS) | Y | N | N
Microsoft Excel Windows (XLS) | Y | Y | Y 2
Microsoft Excel Windows XML 2007 (XLSX) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft Office Excel Binary Format (XLSB) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft Works Spreadsheet (S30/S40) | Y | N | N
OASIS Open Document (ODS) | Y | Y | N
OpenOffice Calc (ODS) | Y | Y | N
StarOffice Calc (ODS) | Y | Y | N
Text and Markup
ANSI (TXT) | Y | Y | Y2
ASCII (TXT) | Y | Y | Y2
HTML (HTM) | Y | Y | Y2, 3 In Export SDK, a bidirectional right-to-left (RTL) tag is extracted from this format and included in the direction element (<dir=RTL>) of the output.
Microsoft Excel Windows XML 2003 | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Word for Windows XML 2003 | Y | Y | Y
Microsoft Visio XML 2003 | Y | Y | Y
Rich Text Format (RTF) | Y | Y | Y 3
Unicode HTML | Y | Y | Y 2,3
Unicode Text (TXT) | Y | Y | Y2
XHTML | Y | Y | Y3
XML | Y | Y | Y
Word Processing
Adobe Maker Interchange Format (MIF) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Apple iChat Log (ICHAT) | Y | Y | N
Apple iWork Pages (GZ) | Y | Y | N
Applix Words (AW) | character set 1252 only | N | N
DisplayWrite (IP) | character set 500, 1026 only | N | N
Folio Flat File (FFF) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Founder Chinese E-paper Basic (CEB) | Y | Y | N
Fujitsu Oasys (OA2) | Y | Y | N
Hangul (HWP) | Y | Y | N
Health level7 (HL7) | Y | Y | Y
IBM DCA/RTF (DC) | character sets 500, 1026 only | N | N
JustSystems Ichitaro (JTD) | Y | Y | N
Lotus AMI Pro (SAM) | Y | Simple Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Thai only | Y
Lotus AMI Professional Write Plus (AMI) | Y | Simple Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Thai only | N
Lotus Word Pro (LWP) | Y | Y | Y3
Lotus SmartMaster (MWP) | Y | Y | N
Microsoft Word PC (DOC) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Microsoft Word Windows V1-2 (DOC) | Y | N | N
Microsoft Word Windows V6, 7, 8, 95 (DOC) | Y | Y | Hebrew only3
Microsoft Word Windows V97 through 2003 (DOC) | Y | Y | Y3
Microsoft Word Windows XML 2007 and 2010 (DOCX) | Y | Y | Y3
Microsoft Word Macintosh (DOC) | Y | N | Y3
Microsoft Works (WPS) | Y | Japanese only | N
Microsoft Write (WRI) | Y | Japanese only | N
OASIS Open Document (ODT) | Y | Y | N
Omni Outliner (OO3) | Y | Y | N
OpenOffice Writer (ODT) | Y | Y | N
Open Publication Structure eBook (EPUB) | Y | Y | Y
StarOffice Writer (ODT) | Y | Y | N
Skype Log (DBB) | Y | Y (null-terminated charsets) | N
WordPad (RTF) | Y | Y | Y
WordPerfect Linux (WPS) | Y | N | N
WordPerfect Macintosh (WPS) | Y | N | N
WordPerfect Windows (WO) | Y | N | N
XML Paper Specification (XPS) | Y | Y | N
XYWrite Windows (XY4) | character set 1252 only | N | N
Yahoo! Instant Messenger (DAT) | Y | Y (null-terminated charsets) | N

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Version 26.2 | Last updated April 2026

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Product: File Content Extraction 26.2

Topic Title: Multibyte and Bidirectional Support