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RTF converter

An .rtf file is a Rich Text Format document: plain ASCII text sprinkled with backslash control words such as \b and \par that encode formatting. Because it is readable text under the hood, nearly every word processor of the past three decades can write and parse it.

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Runs on your device

Drop RTF files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where RTF comes from

Microsoft published RTF in 1987 as the interchange format accompanying the first Windows-era versions of Word, and it served for years as the clipboard's rich-text lingua franca. The specification was revised through version 1.9.1 in 2008, after which Microsoft quietly stopped developing it.

How RTF works

  • Entirely 7-bit ASCII by design; non-ASCII characters are escaped as \u codes, so an RTF survives transport channels that mangle binary data.
  • Formatting uses nested groups delimited by braces, with control words like \fs24 (font size) applying until overridden.
  • Images are supported only as hex-encoded blobs, which roughly doubles their size.
  • There is no compression layer at all, so files run larger than equivalent .docx.

When to use RTF

  • Pasting formatted text between applications that share no other format.
  • A maximum-compatibility export target for very old or very locked-down systems.
  • Legal and medical record systems that still mandate RTF submissions.
  • Generating simple styled documents from code without pulling in a DOCX library.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Near-universal support across word processors old and new.
  • Human-inspectable in any text editor, which aids debugging and recovery.
  • No macro support in the standard, so it dodges the classic Word virus vector.

Limitations

  • Bloated file sizes, especially once images are embedded as hex.
  • Feature set frozen since 2008 — no modern layout or collaboration features.
  • Writers vary wildly in verbosity and dialect, so round-trips can shed formatting.

Compatibility

WordPad has opened RTF on every Windows release since 95, TextEdit handles it on macOS, and Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs all read and write it. Its plain-text structure also makes it one of the easier rich formats for lightweight tools to generate.

An optional \info group can record title, author, and creation time, though many writers omit it entirely.

Convert RTF to another format