Other adaptations of the format were aired in a number of countries including Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and Sweden.

Each episode contains three to five short films, each lasting about ten minutes, in which a real criminal case is reconstructed.

In addition, cases are discussed in the studio in which, for example, the identities of criminals or unknown murder victims are sought with the aid of a photo.

After the programme's 300th episode he passed the presentership onto Butz Peters, who fronted the show together with Zimmermann's daughter Sabine.

With Aktenzeichen XY Eduard Zimmermann and ZDF succeeded in starting a TV format that had not existed worldwide until 1967.

first broadcast in 1963, in which he warned the viewers of "Nepper, Schlepper und Bauernfänger" (Eng: Scammers, Hustlers and Conmen).

Eduard Zimmermann was the guest of Rudi Cerne on his own programme, which concerned a several-decades-old crime that had particularly touched him – the Ursula Herrmann kidnapping, about a young girl who was buried alive in a crate for extortion on 15 September 1981 (a case similar to the case of Barbara Jane Mackle.

In April 2012 the program received international public attention of a somewhat amusing nature when one of its case re-enactment performers, German actor Aaron Defant [de], was erroneously arrested in Stuttgart following his portrayal of a jewel robber in the episode of 14 March 2012 and a call to the police by one of the program's viewers.

[1][2] A 2-hour special episode of Aktenzeichen XY aired on 16 October 2013, dealing with the case of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three.

[3] On 3 June 2020, the Criminal Police Office presented a new suspect on Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst and made a public appeal again for information relating to the case.

Aktenzeichen XY is the first German television format to have entered the American market, where it is known as America's Most Wanted and was originally broadcast from 1988 to 2013 before being revived in 2021.