How to Convert RTF to PDF — 5 Free Methods on Any Device

The quickest path if you do not want to open a desktop app at all. The free RTF to PDF converter on this site runs entirely in your browser — your file never leaves your machine.

1. Open rtf-to-pdf.com in any browser.
2. Drop your .rtf file onto the page (or tap Choose files).
3. The PDF appears in a few seconds. Click Download.

No signup, no watermark, no file-size limit. You can convert up to 20 files at once, or merge multiple RTF files into a single PDF if that is what you need.

Because the conversion happens client-side, it works on a Chromebook, a locked-down work laptop, or a phone — anywhere you have a browser and cannot install software.

Windows 10 and 11 ship with a built-in PDF printer, so any app that can open an RTF and print can produce a PDF.

1. Open the .rtf file in WordPad (or Microsoft Word, if you have it).
2. Press Ctrl + P to open the Print dialog.
3. Select Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer.
4. Click Print, choose where to save, and you have your PDF.

Note: Microsoft removed WordPad from Windows starting with the 24H2 update (late 2024). If your machine no longer has it, use Word, LibreOffice, or the online method above.

TextEdit opens RTF files natively — it is macOS's default for .rtf — and every Mac app can export to PDF through the system print dialog.

1. Double-click the .rtf file (TextEdit opens it by default).
2. Go to File > Export as PDF (or press ⌘ + P and click the PDF dropdown in the bottom-left).
3. Choose a save location and click Save.

This works on every Mac without installing anything extra. The output uses macOS's own PDF renderer, so the result is clean.

LibreOffice Writer is free, open-source, and handles RTF well. It is the go-to choice on Linux, where WordPad and Word are not an option.

1. Open the .rtf file in LibreOffice Writer.
2. Go to File > Export as PDF (not “Save As” — the Export dialog gives you more control).
3. Adjust settings if you need to (image compression, tagged PDF for accessibility), then click Export.

If you have dozens of files, LibreOffice also has a command-line mode: libreoffice --convert-to pdf *.rtf converts every RTF in the folder in one shot.

If you already use Google Workspace, Docs can import RTF — though it converts it to its own format first, so minor formatting shifts are common.

1. Upload the .rtf to Google Drive (drag it in, or use the New > File upload button).
2. Open the uploaded file — Drive will offer to open it in Google Docs.
3. In Docs, go to File > Download > PDF Document (.pdf).

This round-trips through Google's servers and may adjust fonts, spacing and page breaks. For documents where pixel-perfect layout matters (CVs, legal filings), one of the other methods is safer.

RTF supports bold, italics, underline, font sizes, colours, tables, bullets, hyperlinks and embedded images — and all of these carry over to PDF cleanly with every method above. The main thing that can trip you up is page layout: RTF does not lock down pagination the way PDF does, so different apps may break pages in slightly different places. If your document is a one-pager or you do not care about exact page breaks, this is a non-issue.

The one edge case is WMF/EMF images — a legacy Windows vector format some older RTF files use for charts and clip art. Most converters skip or flatten these. If your file has them, you will notice a missing image in the output. Our online tool flags which files contained WMF images so nothing is silently dropped.

Can I convert multiple RTF files to PDF at once? Yes. The online converter handles up to 20 files in one drop. LibreOffice's command-line mode can batch an entire folder. And if you want them combined into one document, use the merge tool.

Is the online converter really free? Yes — no account, no watermark, no limits. The conversion runs in your browser using JavaScript, so there is no server processing your files.

Will my file be uploaded somewhere? Not with the online method on this site. The RTF is parsed and rendered to PDF entirely in your browser tab. The file never leaves your device. Google Docs, by contrast, uploads to Google's servers.

What if I need to go the other way — PDF back to RTF? That is a much harder problem. PDF is a display format: it stores positioned glyphs, not editable text structure. Extracting text from a PDF and rebuilding an editable RTF requires OCR or heuristic layout analysis, and the results are rarely clean. If you just need the plain text, try our RTF to TXT converter.

Not sure what an RTF file actually is? Read the companion guide: What is an RTF file?