The Data Interchange Format (DIF) is a text-based file format used for exporting and importing spreadsheets. It was developed by Software Arts and it’s supported by a large number of spreadsheet editors. DIF files store data using the ASCII character encoding scheme. This mitigates cross platform issues but at the same time creates certain limitations making the DIF format a more basic one when compared to other spreadsheet formats.

One such limitation is that DIF files can only handle a single spreadsheet per workbook. DIF spreadsheets are divided into two sections, data and header. Header parts start a text identifier written in capital letters and data parts start with a number pair indicating the row and column. Cell content is written between quotes.

How to open DIF files

DIF files can be opened with any text editor such as Notepad for Windows, TextEdit for Mac and Vim or Nano for Linux. However, in order to be displayed as standard spreadsheets, DIF files need to be opened with one of the applications below.