The CHM file format and its associated .chm filename extension, is a proprietary file format developed by Microsoft. Its full name is compiled HTML Help. CHM was released to the public in 1997 as a bundle with Microsoft Windows 98 and was primarily designed to facilitate documentation on the Windows platform, particularly help files for software applications that run on the Microsoft Windows platform. Essentially, a CHM file is a collection of HTML files packed as a single compressed file. Though the format is proprietary, it was successfully reverse engineered by the late 90's to early 2000s allowing the development of open source readers that are capable of opening files with the .chm extension. The format was succeeded by the LIT format.
From the 70's to 2007 the open source .txt filename extension format commonly referred to plain text documents encoded using the ASCII character set. To support internationalization and localization, .txt text documents are today text files encoded using the UTF-8 or UTF-16LE standard which is a superset of the ASCII character set. Text documents of type .txt typically have minimal formatting for example no support for bold or italic characters or support for bullet points etc. This allows .txt documents to use minimum storage space and be platform independent as long as the operating system supports the underlying encoding character set used to create the .txt document. On windows .txt file support has existed since 1985 when Windows 1.0 was released and since then has been mostly associated with the notepad application on Microsoft Windows.
FreeFileConvert uses tuned encoding for CHM to TXT conversions, preserving clarity while trimming file size. Finished audio streams instantly across phones, tablets, desktops, and modern browsers without extra tweaks.
Upload CHM files from desktop, tablet, or cloud storage, queue multiple jobs, and let the converter finish autonomously. Return whenever convenient to download synchronized TXT results on any device you rely on.
Process up to 5 files sized 1000 MB per batch without splitting queues manually. Mixed-format uploads convert together, producing consistent TXT audio with dependable progress tracking.
The CHM file format is a binary format that uses the LZX algorithm to compress the HTML data found in the file. The format supports full text searching, indexing, and table of contents, among other useful features.
Unicode (UTF-8 or UTF-16LE) is the defacto character encoding set for .txt files. It is supported by all major operating systems, with many having native applications that can open .txt documents.
Upload your document file in the CHM format from your device, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
Select TXT as the output format and click Convert. Adjust optional settings if needed.
Download the converted document file. Each file stays available for up to 5 downloads.