RTF to PDF

Convert Rich Text Format (.rtf) files to PDF in your browser. The text and paragraphs are kept; fonts, colours and images are not.

Reviewed by Dany, RightSums team · Updated

Runs in your browser. Your files are not uploaded.

pdf-convert-to · PDF tool · UK & US

RTF files come from WordPad, TextEdit and older word processors, and legal and medical systems still export them. This tool reads the RTF source in your browser and turns it into paragraphs of text, keeping line breaks, tabs, special characters and paragraphs that are entirely bold. It understands Unicode and hex escapes and common code pages, including Central European, Cyrillic, Greek and Japanese encodings. Headers, footers, footnotes, embedded pictures and objects are skipped, tables become lines of tab-separated text, and fonts, colours and italics are not kept. The text is then set in DejaVu Sans on pages of your chosen size, with a choice of orientation, margins and page numbers. It suits letters and reports where the words matter more than the styling.

Accepted inputs

  • Rich Text Format (.rtf)

Outputs

  • PDF

How to use the RTF to PDF

  1. Add one or more .rtf files from your device.
  2. Choose the page size, orientation, margins and page numbers.
  3. Click Convert to PDF to rebuild the text on new pages.
  4. Download the PDFs singly or as a ZIP.

Frequently asked questions

What is an RTF file?

Rich Text Format is a cross-platform document format created by Microsoft that stores text with basic formatting as readable codes. WordPad and TextEdit can save it, and many older systems export letters and reports as RTF.

Is RTF formatting kept in the PDF?

Only a little. Paragraphs, line breaks, tabs and fully bold paragraphs are kept. Fonts, sizes, colours, italics and underlining are dropped, and tables become tab-separated lines. For a styled copy, open the file in Word or LibreOffice and export to PDF.

Are images in RTF files supported?

No. Embedded pictures and objects are skipped, as are headers, footers and footnotes. If the images matter, open the RTF in a word processor and save it as .docx, then use Word to PDF, which does include images.

Can I convert a PDF back to RTF?

Yes, with PDF to RTF, a separate tool on this site that rebuilds paragraphs from the PDF's text. Scanned PDFs need PDF OCR first so there is text to extract.

Is my RTF file uploaded?

No. The file is read and converted in your browser and never sent to a server, which matters for the legal and medical letters RTF is often used for. The only thing downloaded from our site is the font used to typeset the PDF.

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