Windows Metafile, seen as .wmf, is the original 16-bit vector format of Microsoft Windows — a replayable log of GDI drawing commands dating back to the era of Windows 3.0. Enormous amounts of 1990s clip art, including the classic Office galleries, shipped in this format.
Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.
Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.The format arrived with Windows 3.0 in 1990, and the Aldus placeable header — which adds the scaling information the bare format lacked — quickly became a de facto part of it. Microsoft superseded it with EMF in 1993, and a serious 2005 vulnerability in Windows' WMF handling accelerated its retirement from anything security-sensitive.
Windows and Microsoft Office still open .wmf for backward compatibility, and LibreOffice handles it across platforms. Support elsewhere is deliberately scarce — browsers have never rendered it, and many image tools dropped the format after the 2005 exploit era — so conversion to EMF, SVG, or PNG is the practical path.
