How to use the rtf to text converter
- Choose an RTF file (up to 25 MB) or drop it on the box.
- Read the word count and other figures, then the extracted text.
- Use the options to put a tab between table cells and to keep or collapse blank lines.
- Choose Copy text or Download .txt to take the result away.
What an RTF file contains
RTF, Rich Text Format, is a text file in which formatting is written as control words such as \b for bold, \par for a new paragraph and \f0 for a font. Groups in braces limit the reach of each setting. Word processors, text editors on several systems and many older programs can save RTF, which makes it a common way to pass documents around. Opening such a file in a plain text editor shows a lot of codes mixed with the words.
The converter reads those codes and keeps the words. Paragraph and line breaks become new lines, tabs stay tabs, and a table row becomes one line with a tab between the cells. Accented letters written as hex bytes such as \'e9 are turned into the right character using the code page named in the file, so a Cyrillic file in Windows-1251 reads correctly. Unicode escapes such as \u8364 become the character, including characters outside the basic range written as two escapes. Typographic marks such as the em dash, bullets and curly quotes are kept as characters.
What is left out
The tool skips everything that is not body text: the font table, color table, style sheet, document information such as the title and author, headers and footers, field instructions (the hyperlink address, for example, while the visible link text is kept), bookmarks and pictures. Formatting such as bold, italics, sizes, colors and styles is not kept. The page shows how many pictures were left out so you know there was more in the file.
The result was checked against hand-written RTF samples in the style of common editors and against an independent RTF reader for the plain text. For similar jobs see the Word document text extractor, the EPUB text extractor and the HTML to text converter. To get text from a PDF use the PDF to text tool.
Limits and privacy
The file is read on your device and nothing is uploaded. Files up to 25 MB are accepted. The tool only accepts files that start with {\rtf and refuses images and other formats, including SVG, by checking the first bytes and not the file name. A damaged or truncated file may give partial text.
Assumptions and limits
- The file is genuine RTF that starts with {\rtf. Documents with the .rtf extension that are really another format are refused.
- Text uses the code page named in the file (the \ansicpg value) or Windows-1252 when none is given.
- Fonts, colors, styles, headers, footers, field codes and pictures are not part of the text output.
- Very large documents show the first 1,000,000 characters in the box, and the download holds all of it.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the output differ from what my word processor shows?
The tool gives only the text. Layout, fonts, images, headers and footers are not kept, and tables are written as tab-separated lines. If a line looks different, check whether it came from a text box, which RTF stores in a way that can be skipped.
Why do some characters look wrong?
Older RTF files store accented letters as bytes in a named code page. If the file does not name the right page, letters can be misread. A file that mixes several code pages for different fonts may also show some wrong characters.
Does it keep hyperlinks?
The visible link text is kept and the web address, which is stored in a field instruction, is left out. Check the original file if you need the addresses.
Is a file with the .rtf name always RTF?
Not always. Some programs save other formats under that name. The tool checks the first bytes of the file and says so when it finds something other than RTF.