Convert Rich Text Format documents to PDF in your browser
Choose RTF files to convert to pdf
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Privacy First
Your files are processed entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded to any server.
Drop your .rtf files in, run the queue, and download each finished PDF or all of them as a ZIP. The converter reads the Rich Text Format markup directly — fonts, colours, indents, alignment, tables, list markers and embedded pictures — and lays it out on pages sized by the document's own page setup. Every file gets a note listing anything the PDF could not reproduce.
Convert RTF documents to PDF by reading the Rich Text Format markup itself — font and colour tables, paragraph indents and alignment, bold, italic, underline, tables, list markers, and embedded PNG and JPEG pictures — and laying the result out on pages sized by the document's own page setup. Text is drawn with the standard PDF fonts rather than the typefaces the file names, so line breaks follow the substituted metrics; every conversion lists what changed. Metafile pictures, embedded objects, headers, footers and footnotes are reported rather than silently dropped.
Upload RTF files
Select RTF files from your device or drag files into the upload area.
Review files
Review the selected files and continue when they are ready.
Convert to PDF
Run the RTF to PDF tool to create the PDF output.
Download the result
Download the finished file. The original file stays on your device and is not uploaded.
Rich Text Format is a plain-text markup language Microsoft published in 1987 as a way to move formatted documents between programs that could not read each other's native files. It survives because it is simple and unencumbered: WordPad wrote it, macOS TextEdit still writes it, and a great many legal, medical and government systems export it because every word processor ever made can open one. That longevity is also why an RTF file will occasionally land in your inbox from a system nobody has updated since the nineties.
Paragraph text with its bold, italic, underline and strikethrough runs; font sizes; text and highlight colours from the document's colour table; left, centre, right and justified alignment; left, right and first-line indents including hanging indents; paragraph spacing; tables built from row and cell definitions; bullet and number markers; explicit page breaks; page size and margins; and pictures stored as PNG or JPEG. Superscript and subscript are placed on a raised or lowered baseline. Hidden text is left out, as the document asks.
Two things, and it tells you both. Typefaces are substituted: PDFBase draws with the standard PDF fonts, so a document set in Cambria comes out in Times, and because line breaking follows the substituted metrics, text can wrap at different points. Pictures stored as Windows metafiles are left out, because a metafile is a stream of drawing commands rather than an image. Headers, footers, footnotes and embedded objects are also reported. Each file in the queue carries its own list, and the same list goes into the ZIP manifest.
Latin-script documents convert cleanly, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Nordic and Central European accents, and the converter reads the document's declared code page so those characters decode correctly rather than turning into mojibake. Scripts the standard PDF fonts cannot draw at all — Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and emoji — are a real limit: a stray character is replaced and reported, and a document written mostly in one of those scripts is refused outright rather than converted into a page of question marks.
No. The .rtf bytes are read by JavaScript running in this tab, and the PDF is assembled in memory by the same code. Nothing is sent anywhere, which matters more than usual for this format: RTF is what a lot of case-management, HR and medical systems export, so the file on your desk is often somebody's personal record rather than a memo.
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RTF • Max 25 MB • Up to 20 files • 100 MB total
Files are processed in your browser and never uploaded
Add up to 20 files. Each one is converted separately, so a file that cannot be read does not stop the rest, and every conversion comes with a note of anything the PDF could not reproduce.