REP File Documentation
Summary
A .rep file is a report file, and the right way to open it depends entirely on which program made it. On this site it is named a SAP BusinessObjects report, which opens in the BusinessObjects business-intelligence client that created it. But .rep is a heavily overloaded extension: many .rep files are plain text (program or error reports) that open in any text editor, and others are game replays or app-specific reports. Its generic MIME type is application/octet-stream. Identify the source program first; if it looks like text, try Notepad or TextEdit.
Technical details
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name (this site) | SAP BusinessObjects report |
| File extension | .rep |
| MIME type | application/octet-stream |
| Format type | Report file (meaning depends on the creating program) |
| Developer (named type) | SAP (BusinessObjects) |
| SAP acquired BusinessObjects | 2007 |
| Named-type category | Business intelligence / reporting |
| Open standard | No |
| Magic number | None reliable — text or binary depending on source |
| How to identify | By the program that created it; check header for text vs binary |
| Also used by | Game replays (StarCraft, Warcraft III), Act! CRM report templates, plain-text program/error reports |
| Opens in (BI report) | BusinessObjects / BI client (Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence) |
| Opens in (text report) | Any text editor |
| Opens in (replay) | The originating game, matching version |
| Related extensions | .rpt, .wid, .unv |
| Vendor page | sap.com (BI platform) |
What is a REP file?
REP is a generic “report” extension shared by many unrelated programs, which is why there is no single way to open one. The file’s meaning comes from whatever created it. On this site the named type is a SAP BusinessObjects report: BusinessObjects is an enterprise business-intelligence and reporting suite, acquired by SAP in 2007, used to plan, report on and analyse business data. Its desktop reports could carry the .rep extension, and they open in the BusinessObjects or BI client tools that produced them rather than in any generic viewer.
That named type is only one of several common meanings, and honesty about the ambiguity is more useful than pretending otherwise. A .rep in front of you might be a proprietary BusinessObjects document, a plain-text status or error report, a game replay, or an application-specific report template. The practical starting point is not “what is the REP format” but “which program wrote this file”. The sections below cover how to answer that and what each answer implies.
The BusinessObjects report: the named type
When a .rep comes from a business-intelligence system, it is a BusinessObjects report document: a proprietary file describing a report’s layout, its queries against a data source, and often cached result data. These files depend on the BusinessObjects platform. You open them in the client that created them, historically the Desktop Intelligence or Web Intelligence tools, and you cannot meaningfully read one in a text editor because the content is proprietary and structured. Related BusinessObjects artefacts you may see alongside a report include .wid (Web Intelligence documents) and .unv (universes, the semantic layer that maps a database into business terms). If your .rep came out of a corporate reporting portal, this is almost certainly the meaning, and it needs the matching BI client.
Plain-text reports: the most openable case
A large share of .rep files are not proprietary at all. Many programs write a .rep as a status, log or error report in plain text: Lotus Organizer, dBASE and numerous utilities have done this for decades. These open cleanly in any text editor and are immediately human-readable. This is also the highest-utility diagnostic: opening an unknown .rep in a text editor takes seconds and tells you which category you are in. If you see readable lines of text, you are done, the file is a text report. If you see binary noise, control characters and unprintable bytes, the file is a proprietary or replay format that needs its source application.
Game replays: not documents at all
In gaming, .rep is a common extension for match replays. StarCraft, Warcraft III and other titles save recorded matches as .rep files, but these are not reports in any document sense. A replay stores the sequence of inputs and events needed to re-simulate a match inside the game engine, not a rendered video. You “open” one by placing it in the game’s replay folder and watching it back from inside the game, and it generally plays only in the same game and the same (or a compatible) version that recorded it. There is no generic replay viewer, and there is no meaningful file conversion; recording a replay to video means playing it back with a screen recorder.
Act! report templates and other app-specific reps
The Act! CRM (formerly Sage Act!) uses .rep for report templates: definitions that tell Act! how to lay out a report over its contact and activity data. Like the BusinessObjects case, these are meaningful only inside their own application. This pattern (an app storing its report or report-template format as .rep) is exactly why the extension is so overloaded. When double-clicking does nothing, the useful move is to work out which program is associated with the file, whether from where you downloaded it, the folder it lives in, or the header check described above.
References
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