The SNP file format was used by

Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools (not to be confused with the old Microsoft Access ...

to store Report Snapshots in a single file which can be viewed and printed by the Microsoft Snapshot Viewer, a Windows program available free of charge from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

that allows report output to be viewed without requiring Access. Support for the format was discontinued in Access 2010 and later versions; Access reports can be exported in PDF/XPS and Excel formats viewable on many platforms. SNP files are based on the Microsoft

Compound File Binary Format Compound File Binary Format (CFBF), also called Compound File, Compound Document format, or Composite Document File V2 (CDF), is a compound document file format for storing numerous files and streams within a single file on a disk. CFBF is develope ...

(CFBF), which is also the basis for the Advanced Authoring Format (AAF). CFBF is a reasonably simple container format which can store multiple files, directories and so on. For SNP files,

uses CFBF to store each page as a separate Enhanced Metafile (EMF)-like format containing all of the graphics commands required to reproduce the page. The last CFBF record in an SNP file is a 'HEADER' file, which primarily contains a DEVMODE structure.{{cite web , url=https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/wingdi/ns-wingdi-_devicemodea , title=The DEVMODE data structure , website=Microsoft Dev Center, date=5 December 2018 Data from this structure is used to render the SNP file in Microsoft Snapshot Viewer, in conjunction with the default printer selected. As CFBF files are not compressed, Microsoft's CAB format is used to reduce the size of the CFBF, producing a file which may be only a few kilobytes in size for each page of text and simple graphics—lines, boxes, etc.

References

Computer file formats Digital container formats