This article explains what an ATOMSVC file is, how to open one in Excel, and how to save one to another text format to make it easier to read through.

What to Know

  • An ATOMSVC file is an Atom Service Document file.Open one with Excel’s Power Pivot add-in.Text editors can convert one to a text-based format.

What Is an ATOMSVC File?

A file with the ATOMSVC file extension is an Atom Service Document file. It’s sometimes called a Data Service Document file or Data Feed ATOM file.

An ATOMSVC file is a regular text file, formatted like an XML file, that defines how a document should reach a data source. This means there isn’t any real data in the file—just text addresses, or references to the real resources.

How to Open an ATOMSVC File

You can open ATOMSVC files using Power Pivot for Excel, but you can’t just double-click the file and expect it to open like how most files do.

ATOMSVC files are similar to ATOM files in that they’re both XML-based text files that refer to remote data. However, ATOM files (like .RSS files) are usually used by news and RSS readers as a way to stay updated with news and other content from websites.

Instead, with Excel open, go to Insert > PivotTable, and then select Use an external data source. Through Choose Connection, select Browse for More to locate the ATOMSVC file, and then decide whether to insert the table into a new worksheet or the existing one.

Since they’re just plain text files, an ATOMSVC file can open with any text editor too, like Windows Notepad. There are many download links to advanced text editors that work with Windows and macOS.

Newer versions of Excel have Power Pivot integrated into the program by default; here’s how to enable the add-in.

Microsoft SQL Server should also be able to open ATOMSVC files, as might other programs that deal with large sets of data. You might also have luck with Microsoft’s Power BI Desktop.

How to Convert an ATOMSVC File

We don’t know of any special tool or converter that can save an ATOMSVC file to another format. However, since they’re used to pull information from some other data source, if you open one in Excel to import that data, it’s possible that you may then be able to save the Excel document to another spreadsheet or text format. Excel can save formats like CSV and XLSX.

We haven’t tried ourselves to confirm this, but using this method wouldn’t really be converting the ATOMSVC file itself into another format, just the data that it pulled down into Excel. However, you can use a text editor to convert it to another text-based format like HTML or TXT since the file contains only text.

Still Can’t Open It?

If your file doesn’t open with the programs mentioned above, double-check the file extension to make sure you’re not misreading it. It can be easy to confuse file formats with one another, since some file extensions look alike.

Most file formats that are more widely used, like MP3 and PNG, can be converted using a free file converter. There likely just aren’t any that support this format.

For example, SVC might appear to be related to ATOMSVC since they share the same last three file extension letters, but those are actually WCF Web Service files that open with Visual Studio. The same idea is true for other file extensions that resemble the Atom Service Document format, like SCV.

If you don’t really have an ATOMSVC file, research the real file extension to learn which programs can open or convert that specific file.

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