What Is an ELM File?
A file with the ELM file extension is an Office theme file. These uncompressed settings files used by Microsoft’s Office and FrontPage programs hold all the different parts of the theme, and might also reference external JPGs or other images and files. The fantasy MMORPG video game Eternal Lands also uses the ELM file extension, but for map files. They are sometimes stored with GZ compression and are therefore named *.elm.gz.
How to Open an ELM File
ELM files are used by Microsoft Office programs, but can’t be opened directly by them. In other words, even though you may have files with this extension in your Office installation directory, you can’t manually open one in Word or Excel, for example. The discontinued Microsoft FrontPage web design program uses ELM files, too. Since MS Office themes are normally entirely text-based, any text editor can open them as well—see our Best Free Text Editors list for some of our favorites. When opened as a text document, the file won’t be able to be used like you’d expect, but instead it will just show some detail about the theme in text form. The free Eternal Lands game uses map files.
How to Convert an ELM File
ELM files used by Microsoft products probably can’t be converted to any other format and still do what they do. They’re used by the appropriate programs automatically, and those only, so conversion to a different format is unnecessary. If for whatever reason you do want to convert an ELM file to something like HTM, TXT, or another text-based format, you can do so with a text editor. But again, this would produce a file that would no longer function properly with Microsoft products and would only be useful to make it easier for you to read the text contents of the file. Eternal Lands is probably the only other software that uses ELM files. Since they’re of an entirely different format from an Office theme, they most likely need to remain in their original format (with the .ELM extension).
Still Can’t Open It?
It’s common for some file formats to appear related because their file extensions are related. But that’s not always true. For example, EMM shares two of the same letters as ELM, but it’s reserved for documents created by the MindMaple software. EL is a similar one that’s used by the Emacs app as a text file. If your file doesn’t pertain to the formats mentioned above, it’s best to restart your research to learn more about the format and its compatible programs.
