CBZ/CBR → TXT
Going from Comic book archive (.cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cb7) to Plain text (.txt) is a routinely useful direction for this kind of file — a TXT file is plain text, opens in far more software, and is smaller. Going from Comic book archive to Plain text does raise extra questions worth thinking about: you lose every illustration, cover and diagram; metadata such as title, author and language. Below we explain in detail how Comic book archive becomes Plain text and what to watch out for, and the page ends with a converter that does the job right in your browser — nothing is uploaded, the file never leaves your machine.
What is CBZ/CBR?
A comic archive (.cbz, .cbr, .cbt, .cb7) is really just a set of one-image-per-page files packed into an archive under a different extension: .cbz is ZIP, .cbr is RAR, .cbt is TAR and .cb7 is 7z. It has no text layer, so it can be neither searched nor copied, and page order comes entirely from how filenames sort — which means the names must be zero-padded (001.jpg, 002.jpg) or page 10 lands right after page 2. It suits comics, art books and page-scanned volumes: it is a collection of images, not a text book. Read the CBZ/CBR format guide
| Extensions | .cbr.cbz.cbt.cb7 |
|---|---|
| Typical use | Comics, art books and books scanned to images; fundamentally an image bundle rather than a text book. |
What is TXT?
TXT is plain text: nothing but characters and line breaks, with no presentation information at all. That makes it the smallest and most compatible option — from the most basic feature phone to any operating system, there is almost no software that cannot open it. Most Chinese web novels circulate as TXT, and it is the easiest format to copy, search, batch-process and convert further. The cost is that it stores no images, colours, tables or table of contents, and there is nowhere to keep the title and author, so it behaves more like a clean body of text than a complete book. Read the TXT format guide
| Extensions | .txt |
|---|---|
| Typical use | Chinese web novels, logs, and any text-only content that needs maximum compatibility. |
How to convert CBZ/CBR to TXT
A comic archive is a renamed archive: .cbz=ZIP, .cbr=RAR, .cbt=TAR, .cb7=7z. It has no text layer, and page order comes from filename sorting — if names are unpadded (1.jpg, 2.jpg … 10.jpg) page 10 lands right after page 2, so rename with zero padding first.
Because TXT stores characters only, every font, size, colour, table, footnote and hyperlink is gone, and headings degrade to ordinary lines. You must also choose an encoding (UTF-8 for Chinese, GBK if targeting older devices).
Layout must be rebuilt: the paragraph, column and figure positions in the source were arranged for a fixed page and mean nothing once the target reflows. The converter can only re-stitch a text stream, so paragraphs may merge wrongly, columns may interleave and figures may land mid-sentence. Read the first few chapters afterwards, watching dialogue breaks and figure placement.
The source has no text layer — every page is an image. No text-targeted conversion can conjure text: you either get blank output or the image inserted as one oversized object. Getting searchable, reflowable text requires OCR first, and OCR on Chinese fiction introduces character errors that need proofreading.
The source is one full-page image per page while the target reflows: each image is inserted in sequence, and with no text layer you end up with an image stream. The result is usually huge and unsearchable — a worse reading experience than the original.
Convert CBZ/CBR to TXT
COMIC → TXT
The conversion runs entirely in your browser — your file is never uploaded.
A novel reader that syncs your progress across every platform
Tide Reader opens TXT and EPUB, detects chapters on import, lays the text out the way you like it, and syncs your reading position across Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. Drop the converted file in and start reading.
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