What you should know
RTF (Rich Text Format) is a rich-text format created by Microsoft in 1987 to exchange documents between word processors. It describes text and its formatting with readable commands, in a plain text file.
Almost every program can open it, from advanced notepads (WordPad, TextEdit) to office suites, which makes it a format of last resort for compatibility.
Strengths
- Read by virtually every word processor, even old ones
- Bold, italics, fonts, simple tables and images supported
- No macros: no risk of malicious code
- Opened directly by WordPad and TextEdit
Limitations to know
- Very heavy files as soon as there are images, stored in hexadecimal
- Advanced layout poorly preserved
- A frozen format: Microsoft has not updated it since 2008
- Less suited than DOCX or ODT to long documents
When to use it
Use RTF to send formatted text to someone whose software you do not know, or for an old tool that accepts nothing else. For everything else, DOCX, ODT or PDF are better.
Quality, size and compatibility
FileXvert converts RTF to PDF or DOCX on its server with LibreOffice, and DOCX to RTF. Expect an RTF file much heavier than the original DOCX if it contains images: in our tests, a 59 KB document with one photo gave a 6.2 MB RTF.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is my RTF file so large?
- Because RTF stores images as hexadecimal text, without efficient compression. An illustrated document can weigh a hundred times more than as DOCX.
- Can an RTF contain a virus?
- No macros, unlike old Word files, so the format is safer. RTF reader vulnerabilities have existed, though: keep your software up to date.