Encoding of SMS-files from Nokia backup (.nbf)?

Question

I am using a Mac and have a Nokia phone. Therefore I cannot sync it with my computer, but I found out, that making a backup on the creates a .nbf-file, which contains all the data I want (contacts and messages). The contacts are stored easily accessible as vCards, so that's cool. Unfortunately the messages are stored each text separately in one file, which looks pretty weird when I open it with a text editor (for example TextWrangler). I can see the numbers and the text, but no information about date. I uploaded the file here: http://www.4shared.com/file/7LNsuPbF/00000A123EB640F500002010005000.html I already tried out different encodings, but it never looks good. Maybe someone has a clue how to read that file? Could it be encrypted or something?

Answer 1

Try https://sourceforge.net/projects/nbuexplorer/ - it should be able to open .nbf files.

It is/was a C# project, and it only provides Windows exe as release download, however, I could get this .exe to run on Ubuntu 18.04 using mono; and I could also get the project sources to compile on Ubuntu using xbuild (the result again being an .exe file that can be run with Mono), see comments in my build script get-nbuexplorer.svn.sh.