Windows Compressed Enhanced Metafile

Microsoft originally developed the Windows Metafile ( .WMF ) format in the 1990s to store vector graphics and bitmap data. Microsoft then replaced the WMF format with the Enhanced Windows Metafile (EMF) format, which is a 32-bit format that is device-independent.

Microsoft developed the EMZ compression format to reduce the size of EMF files to save storage space and more easily transfer EMF graphics between applications, particularly Microsoft Visio and the Office suite, which includes Word and PowerPoint. While EMF files are common and various image editors may export them, EMZ files are much less common.

You can open EMZ files in Microsoft Visio , Word , and PowerPoint in Windows by selecting the Insert tab, then clicking Pictures . You can also simply drag and drop the EMZ file into a document or presentation opened in the application.

If you do not have access to the aforementioned Office applications, you can open EMZ files by decompressing them with a GZIP decompression utility such as GNU zip (gzip.exe), WinGZip, or PeaZip . You may need to rename the .emz file extension to .emf.gz to extract the EMF file with PeaZip. After decompressing the EMZ file, you can extract the EMF file contained in the EMZ file and open it with a program that supports the EMF format, such as XnViewMP (multiplatform), Adobe Illustrator , and OpenOffice Draw (multiplatform).

Several applications, including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, can convert EMZ files to other formats.

For example, Microsoft PowerPoint can convert EMZ files to one of the following formats:

Programs that open EMZ files

Updated: May 2, 2022