Rich Text Format

RTF, the Rich Text Format, is a document format that stores formatted text as readable plain text with control codes. Almost every word processor reads and writes it, which is why it is still used where programs from different makers have to exchange documents: letters and reports generated by medical, legal and accounting software, mail-merge templates, exports from older information systems. On a Mac, TextEdit saves formatted text as RTF by default.

Origin and versions

Microsoft introduced RTF in 1987 for exchanging documents between Word and other programs. Version 1.0 was published in 1992, and each new Word release brought a new revision: 1.5 for Word 97 added Unicode characters, 1.6 for Word 2000 nested tables. Version 1.9.1 from March 2008, matching Word 2007, was the last one. According to the Library of Congress, Microsoft has not added features since then. Word still opens and saves RTF, but newer features such as content controls or modern charts do not fit into it.

How RTF works

Open an RTF in Notepad and you see something like {\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252 {\b bold} text\par}. Everything is built from three elements:

• Control words starting with a backslash, such as \b (bold) or \par (new paragraph).
• Groups in curly braces, which limit where formatting applies.
• A header with the font table, colour table and code page, followed by the text itself.

The file is 7-bit ASCII, so non-English characters are written as codes: either via a code page (\ansicpg) or as \u followed by the Unicode number. Images are stored as hexadecimal text, two characters per byte, which is why an RTF with a few photos can be several times larger than the same DOCX. RTF cannot contain macros. It can, however, embed OLE objects, and RTF attachments have been used to deliver attacks on old Office vulnerabilities, so treat unexpected RTF attachments with the same care as Word files.

How to open RTF files

• Windows: WordPad, the traditional RTF viewer, was removed in Windows 11 version 24H2. Use Microsoft Word or the free LibreOffice Writer.
• macOS: TextEdit opens and edits RTF natively; Pages and Word work as well.
• Linux: LibreOffice Writer, AbiWord.
• Browser and phone: Google Docs imports RTF. Word for the web and the Word mobile apps do not open it, so on a phone a conversion to DOCX or PDF is the quickest way.

Common problems

RTF won’t open on Windows 11

After the 24H2 update, a double-click on .rtf may do nothing or ask for an app, because WordPad is gone. Install LibreOffice or open the file in Word and set it as the default for .rtf.

Notepad shows code instead of text

Notepad shows the raw RTF markup. That is normal; the file is not broken, it just needs a program that interprets the codes.

Wrong characters instead of accents

Older programs sometimes write RTF with a code page that does not match the text. The letters then come out as other symbols in every program. Re-export the document from the source program with the right setting. If that is not possible, open the RTF in a plain text editor and change the number after \ansicpg in the first line, for example 1252 for Western European or 1250 for Central European text.

RTF file is huge

Almost always images in hexadecimal. Converting to DOCX or PDF stores them in binary form and the file shrinks considerably.

RTF lost formatting

RTF from TextEdit or simple editors contains only basic formatting, and features newer than Word 2007 are dropped when saving to RTF. That is a limit of the format, not of the program.

Converting RTF

RTF is usually converted to DOCX for further editing in Word, to PDF for sending and archiving, or to ODT. Our converter processes RTF on our own servers; text, fonts, tables, images, headers, footers and footnotes are carried over. It also creates EPUB and other e-book formats from RTF, and Markdown or plain text when you only need the content. In the other direction, any DOC, DOCX or ODT document can be saved as RTF for software that accepts nothing else.

RTF in brief