FLIPCHART File Documentation
Summary
A flipchart file (.flipchart) is an interactive whiteboard lesson created in ActivInspire, Promethean’s classroom software. It holds the lesson’s pages, text, images, audio, video and interactive activities as a single ZIP-packaged document, so the file begins with the ZIP bytes 50 4B 03 04 and its generic MIME type is application/octet-stream. To open or edit one you need ActivInspire, which is free from Promethean for Windows and macOS. To share the content without it, open the file and export to .pdf or images.
Technical details
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name | ActivInspire Flipchart |
| File extension | .flipchart |
| MIME type | application/octet-stream |
| Format type | ZIP-based interactive lesson package (binary) |
| Developer | Promethean |
| Application | ActivInspire (Windows, macOS, historically Linux) |
| Introduced | 2009 (ActivInspire, succeeding ActivStudio/ActivPrimary) |
| Base container | ZIP archive |
| Magic number | 50 4B 03 04 (“PK”, ZIP local file header) |
| Byte order | Little-endian (ZIP structures) |
| Contains | Pages, XML/data description, embedded images/audio/video |
| Interactive objects | Drag-and-drop, containers, restrictions, question/voting tools, hyperlinks |
| Open standard | No — internal layout proprietary to Promethean |
| Predecessor format | .flp (ActivStudio/ActivPrimary; importable) |
| License to open | Free (ActivInspire, registration required) |
| Related extensions | .flp, .notebook, .iwb |
| Vendor site | prometheanworld.com |
What is a flipchart file?
A .flipchart file is the lesson document of ActivInspire, the interactive-whiteboard teaching software made by Promethean, a maker of classroom displays. ActivInspire launched in 2009 to replace Promethean’s older ActivStudio and ActivPrimary programs, and a “flipchart” is its version of a slide deck, except that every page is interactive. A page can carry text, images, audio, video, shapes, pen annotations and active objects such as drag-and-drop activities, containers, restrictions, question and voting tools, and hyperlinks. Teachers build flipcharts to run lessons on a Promethean ActivBoard or ActivPanel, and large libraries of ready-made .flipchart lessons are shared among educators.
The important thing to know up front is that this is not a generic document. The format is proprietary to Promethean, so ordinary apps do not read it, and the answer to “how do I open it” is a specific program, the free ActivInspire, rather than a third-party viewer. What the format is, structurally, is a ZIP package, and that part is worth understanding because it explains both how the file behaves and why unpacking it does not get you very far.
The ZIP container: PK, local headers and the central directory
A .flipchart is a ZIP archive with a different extension. It begins with the ZIP local file header signature 50 4B 03 04 (“PK\x03\x04”), and internally it follows the ordinary ZIP layout: a local header plus compressed data for each stored file, then a central directory near the end of the archive that indexes every entry, and finally an end-of-central-directory record.
50 4B 03 04 local file header ─ one per stored file
version needed, flags, compression method (usually DEFLATE),
CRC-32, compressed size, uncompressed size, name length, name
[ compressed file data ]
... more local header + data pairs ...
50 4B 01 02 central directory ─ index of all entries (name, offset, CRC)
50 4B 05 06 end of central dir ─ entry count and directory offsetEach entry carries its own CRC-32 checksum and its compressed and uncompressed sizes, and most entries are compressed with DEFLATE, the same algorithm ZIP uses generally. Because the format is standard ZIP, you can make a copy of a flipchart, rename it to .zip, and open it with any archive tool. Inside you will find the lesson’s pages, the embedded media (images, audio and video as separate files), and a data description that records the objects, their layout and their interactivity.
The proprietary payload inside the ZIP
Unpacking the ZIP is where the openness ends. The ZIP container is a public, documented format, but the contents are not: the internal file names, the folder arrangement and the schema of the data description that ties objects to pages are proprietary to Promethean and are not published. So while an archive tool can list and extract the parts, no other application can reassemble them into a working, interactive lesson, and there is no documented mapping from that internal data to a rival format.
This is the same design pattern used by many modern documents (DOCX and XLSX are ZIP packages too), with one crucial difference: those Office formats publish their internal XML schema, whereas Promethean’s is closed. The practical consequence is that reading a flipchart’s content requires ActivInspire itself. ActivInspire is a free download that runs on Windows and macOS (a Linux build has been offered historically), it remains maintained, and it can also import the older .flp files from ActivStudio and ActivPrimary and save them as .flipchart.
Exporting a flipchart, and what interactivity is lost
If you only need the content, for a handout or for use on a non-Promethean board, the route is to open the flipchart in ActivInspire and export. Exporting to PDF turns each page into a PDF page, good for printing and proofing. Exporting to PNG or JPG saves individual pages as images to drop into documents, websites or other slide tools; prefer PNG for pages with crisp text and diagrams, since JPEG can soften them.
Every one of these exports flattens the lesson. A flipchart’s value is its active objects, the drag-and-drop items, containers, voting tools, embedded video and hyperlinks, and none of that survives an export to a static PDF or image. Moving a flipchart onto a SMART Board is the case people most often ask about, and it is honest to say there is no reliable automatic converter. SMART Notebook uses a different .notebook format with a different interactive object model; the realistic path is to export the flipchart’s pages to PDF or images from ActivInspire and import those into SMART Notebook, accepting that the interactivity has to be rebuilt.
Sourcing and privacy
A .flipchart is a passive lesson document, a ZIP of pages, media and a data description, not an executable, so opening a genuine one in ActivInspire is safe. Two cautions are worth stating. First, sourcing: because searches for a way to “open flipchart file” can surface fake “universal viewer” downloads that bundle adware, get ActivInspire only from Promethean (prometheanworld.com). Second, privacy: because the file is a ZIP, any embedded media, and any pupil names or photos a teacher placed on a page, are contained inside it and travel with the file. Be mindful of that before sharing a classroom flipchart publicly, since anyone can extract those parts with a plain archive tool.
References
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