Recommended File Formats

The following file formats are recommended for maintaining and preserving digital content. They were taken from the Smithsonian’s “Recommended Preservation Formats for Electronic Records.”

Type	Primary Preservation Format (preferred)	Secondary Preservation Format (acceptable)
Text/word processing applications	PDF/A, PDF	RTF (text), TXT, XML with schema
Spreadsheet applications or structured data	PDF/A (must capture entire workbook – macros disabled) PDF	CSV Tab-delimited TXT, XML
Presentations	PDF/A, PDF	Original
Images	TIFF (uncompressed)	JPG, DNG, PNG, JP2
Graphics	TIFF	PDF
Video	Motion JPEG 2000, MOV, AVI	MPEG-4
Audio	BWF-Broadcast WAV (.wav is the extension)	WAV, AIFF, FLAC
Database Management Systems (DBMS)	Keep original	XML with schema
CAD	PDF/A, PDF/E or PDF with original file	Original