About RTF files
RTF, the Rich Text Format, is a document format that stores formatted text as plain, readable codes. It is created by WordPad on Windows, TextEdit on macOS, many email programs and older word processors, and it is a common export format of medical, legal, accounting and subtitle software. Its advantage is that almost any program can open it. Its weakness is that it can look different in each of them, which is a good reason to turn an RTF into a PDF before you share or print it.
What is kept in the PDF
- fonts, sizes, bold, italic, underline and colours;
- paragraph alignment, indents, line spacing and lists;
- tables with borders and shading;
- embedded images;
- headers, footers and page breaks set in the document.
If the RTF does not define a page size, standard A4 or Letter pages are used. Fonts that are not available on our server are replaced by similar ones. The text in the PDF stays real text: you can search it and copy from it.
Common problems
- Page breaks differ from WordPad. WordPad shows the text without real pages. The PDF uses the paper size and margins stored in the file, so lines and pages can break in other places.
- Images are missing. Some programs save pictures in an RTF only as links to separate files. Such pictures cannot be included; open the file in a word processor, insert the images into the document and save it again.
- Letters in other languages look wrong. Very old RTF files sometimes declare the wrong character set. Open the file in a word processor, check the text and save it again before converting.
Privacy and limits
RTF files are converted on our own server with LibreOffice. They are uploaded over an encrypted HTTPS connection, converted and deleted right after; the PDF is kept for 15 minutes at most. Up to 20 files at once, each up to 100 MB. For Word files, see Word to PDF; for plain text without formatting, Text to PDF works right in your browser. To get an editable RTF from a PDF, use PDF to RTF.