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RTF to PDF

Free online RTF file opener

Open an RTF file with nothing installed

Drop the .rtf file below and read it right here, laid out the way it was written — fonts, bold, colours, tables and pictures included. No Word, no WordPad, no signup, and nothing uploaded. Keep the PDF afterwards if you need to send the document on.

  • Reads it on the page
  • No app needed
  • No upload
  • 100% free
  • Any device
Options — page size, combine into one PDF

A whole folder of old files to read through? Drop up to 20 at once — or use the merge variant to read them as one document.

How to open an RTF file

Three steps, all of them local. The document never leaves your browser tab.

  1. Drop the .rtf file onto the box above

    Drag it in from your desktop or Downloads folder, or click the box and pick it. Nothing installs and nothing uploads — the file is read by JavaScript running in this tab. Up to 20 files at a time, 25 MB each.

  2. Read it on the page

    The document is parsed and typeset in well under a second, then opens in a viewer right here — bold, italics, fonts, colours, tables and pictures where the writer put them. Drop several files and each row gets its own Preview button.

  3. Keep the PDF, or don't

    If you only needed to read the file, close the tab and nothing is left behind. If you need to send it on, press Download PDF — a copy that opens on any machine, without the recipient hitting the same problem you just did.

Why won't your .rtf file open?

Almost always because the machine has no app claiming the extension — not because anything is wrong with the file. On Windows that is usually WordPad's removal in version 24H2: the file association went with it, so a double-click now produces the "How do you want to open this file?" dialog. On a Chromebook or Android phone there was never a built-in RTF viewer to begin with, and dragging the file into a browser tab just downloads it again, because browsers render HTML and PDF but not RTF.

Opening it in Notepad or another plain-text editor "works" in the narrow sense that the file is plain text — but you get the markup, not the document:{\rtf1\ansi\deff0followed by font tables, colour tables and control words with your sentences threaded between them. Something has to interpret that markup and lay the text out. That is what this page does, using the same parser and typesetter as the RTF to PDF converter, with the result shown on screen instead of going straight to a download.

What opens an RTF file on each platform

Windows 11 (24H2 and newer)Nothing built in — WordPad was removed. Word, LibreOffice or this page.
Windows 10 / older Windows 11WordPad opens it. Word and LibreOffice too.
macOSTextEdit opens .rtf natively, and Quick Look (spacebar in Finder) previews it.
iPhone / iPadThe Files app previews RTF with Quick Look; Pages opens it for editing.
AndroidNo built-in viewer. Google Docs can import it, or use this page in the browser.
ChromeOSNo built-in viewer — Chrome downloads .rtf instead of rendering it.
LinuxLibreOffice Writer, AbiWord and most desktop text editors.
Any browserThis page: read it in place, keep the PDF if you want it.

The desktop apps are all fine when you have them. The reason to open the file here instead is the situation people usually arrive in: a locked-down work laptop where you cannot install LibreOffice, a phone, a Chromebook, or a single file that arrived by email and does not justify installing an office suite to read once.

Read it, then decide what to do with it

  • Just needed to read it: close the tab. Nothing was uploaded and nothing was saved.
  • Need to send it to someone: download the PDF. It opens on every device, so the recipient will not repeat the puzzle you just solved.
  • Need to edit it: LibreOffice Writer opens .rtf on every desktop platform for free; Google Docs will import it if you are willing to upload.
  • It came out of WordPad: the WordPad to PDF page covers that case specifically.

If you want to know what you are actually looking at, what is an RTF file takes the format apart — where it came from, why it keeps turning up, and when converting is the right call.

Opening RTF files — frequently asked questions

How do I open an RTF file?

Drop it onto the box at the top of this page and it opens in a viewer a moment later, with its formatting intact. On a desktop you can also use Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer or — on a Mac — TextEdit. What you cannot do is open it in a browser directly: browsers download .rtf files rather than rendering them, which is exactly the gap this page fills.

Why does Windows ask me which app to use for a .rtf file?

Because WordPad, the app that used to own the extension, is gone. Microsoft deprecated it in September 2023 and removed it from Windows 11 starting with version 24H2, and nothing took over the file association. The file itself is intact — it just has no default app anymore.

Is it safe to open an RTF file here?

The file never leaves your device: it is parsed and rendered in your browser tab, with no upload and no server involved. Worth knowing in general, though — RTF has been used to carry exploits aimed at Microsoft Word (the format allows embedded objects). This viewer reads only text, formatting, tables and PNG/JPEG pictures, and ignores embedded objects entirely, so an .rtf from an unexpected email is safer to look at here than by double-clicking it.

Can I edit the document after opening it?

No — this is a viewer and a converter, not an editor. To change the text, open the .rtf in LibreOffice Writer (free, all platforms), Microsoft Word or Google Docs. To read it, or to hand it to someone else in a format that always opens, this page is quicker.

I opened it in Notepad and got \rtf1\ansi and a wall of braces. Why?

You saw the raw markup. RTF is a plain-text format: the words of the document are wrapped in control words like \b for bold and \par for a new paragraph, plus font and colour tables in braces. Notepad shows the file exactly as stored instead of interpreting it. This page does the interpreting.

Does the viewer keep the original formatting?

Yes. Bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, super- and subscript, font sizes and families, text and highlight colours, alignment, indents, tab stops, bullet lists, tables, page breaks, embedded PNG and JPEG pictures and clickable links all survive, and the page size and margins come from the document itself. Vector artwork stored as a Windows metafile (WMF/EMF) is the one thing that is dropped — the tool says so when a file contained any.

Does it read old files with accented or Cyrillic text?

Yes. Documents written before Unicode escapes were common used the legacy Windows code pages, and the parser handles cp1250 through cp1258 alongside Unicode — so a 1990s Cyrillic or Central European .rtf comes out readable rather than as mojibake.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes, in any modern mobile browser, with nothing to install. On Chrome for Android and Safari on iOS — which have no built-in PDF viewer inside a page — the result opens in a new tab instead of the inline preview.