Over time, software programs are updated and file formats change. This means that file formats can become obsolete over time. Electronic records that were created in older formats may not be accessible. When donating or transferring records to the Archives, they must be in a well supported file format. It’s important to use file formats that are widely adopted and well-documented with minimal external dependencies files to ensure they will be accessible in the long-term.

We maintain a list of recommended and acceptable file formats for digital preservation. Our recommended formats have the highest likelihood of being accessible in the long-term. We are also able to preserve file formats labelled as “acceptable”, but preservation services are limited for these files. We may normalize them to more stable formats for long term preservation. Consult this list before transferring or donating digital materials. Materials in formats not listed may be accepted, but we cannot guarantee the long-term preservation of these materials.

Textual materials

• Preferred: PDF/A
• Acceptable: PDF, TXT, DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, PPT, PPTX, XML

Still images

• Preferred: TIFF
• Acceptable: JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG

Tabular data

• Preferred: original format
• Acceptable: CSV, XLS, XLSX, TSV

Audio

• Coming soon

Video

• Coming soon