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RTF

RTF

Rich Text Format

RTF is a plain-text file format that encodes rich text (fonts, bold, italic, tables) using ASCII control sequences, making it readable in any text editor even without a rich-text viewer. Microsoft published the specification in 1987 to enable interoperability between its products and third-party software. Because RTF is both human-readable and widely supported, it became a popular interchange format between different word processors before DOCX standardized the field.

File extensions .rtf
MIME type application/rtf
Developer Microsoft
First released 1987
Category Documents
Open standard Yes

What opens RTF files

  • Microsoft Word
  • LibreOffice Writer
  • Apple TextEdit
  • WordPad (Windows)
  • Google Docs (via import)

Browse File Formats

Reference details for 53 file formats — extensions, MIME types, what opens each one, and how they convert.