This tutorial talks about how to extract text strings from binary files. BinText is a useful tool for researching on EXE and other binary files such as DLL, BIN, and a lot others. It just takes a binary file from you and lists all the textual data that it finds inside. You can selectively choose which text strings you want. It even offers you some filters that you apply and get filtered list of text that you can export. It lets you save the extracted string to a TXT file. This is a simple and portable software that you can run from flash drive to extract text from any binary file.
If you open a binary file in a text editor or code editor then you will see text which is in not understandable form. And in that text, there are some plan text strings along with other encoded characters. And the software I have mentioned in this post lets you extract the ones which are plain text. You can use this software for numerous purposes. If you want to investigate some binary files then this software will come in handy. You just specify a binary file in this tool and save the text that it extracts for you.
How to Extract Text Strings from Binary Files?
You can download this software from here and then extract the ZIP package anywhere you like. I have already mentioned that it is a portable software so you can start using it right after you have downloaded it. The interface of this software looks like this.
Now, just hit the Browse button and locate the binary file that you’d like to scan. Next, hit the Go button and it will list all text strings. You can analyze them from its interface. Also, you can switch to the Filters tab and then simply apply filters to see results that you want.
After getting the desired text strings, you can save them in a file. To do that, just use “Save” button from the bottom right corner of the tool. It will help you save the file in TXT format. And you can save that anywhere you like.
In this way, you can use this free software to locate text in binary files. During my testing, I was able to extract text from EXE, DLL, BIN files and you are free to use it on other type of binary files as well. The software is portable and you can carry it with you in a flash drive and use it on any computer that you like.
Final thoughts
BinText is a simple and a very nice software that you can use to easily extract text from binary files. It supports almost all the binary files and lists all the text strings on its interface. And I really liked the fact that it has included a lot of filters that you can use to refine the list of strings it shows to you. So, if you’re looking for some free software to extract plain text data from binary files then you can give it a try.
