Convert RTF to PDF
Make a searchable PDF from a Rich Text Format file
Your files stay with you. Conversion happens inside the browser; no file is ever uploaded to a server.
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How it works
Tap or click the box and pick your RTF file; only files with the .rtf extension are accepted. There is nothing to set: paper size, landscape or portrait orientation and margins are taken from the file's own header, and when the file does not declare them the page is US Letter with 1-inch margins. Paragraphs, left, centre and right alignment, font size, bold text, bullet and numbered lists, page breaks and pasted JPEG or PNG images all come through. A three-page letter typed in WordPad turns into a PDF with selectable, searchable text in a few seconds. Files saved on an older Windows PC store é, ü or ñ as single bytes from a code page; the tool reads the code page declared in the file, so those letters are written correctly with the font embedded in the PDF. If the document contains a table, look at the output before you send it: cells are written one under another as plain text, without borders.
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What is RTF?
Rich Text Format is a plain-text document format Microsoft published in 1987 so that different word processors could exchange formatted text. Open an .rtf file in Notepad and you see {\rtf1 followed by control words such as \par and \b: bold, font size and paragraph breaks all travel as those readable commands rather than as binary data. WordPad saved to RTF by default, which is why so many old letters and notes on Windows PCs are .rtf files; Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs and Apple Pages open it too. This tool parses those control words in your browser and lays the text out on PDF pages.
What is Code page (cp1252)?
A code page is a table from the days before Unicode that says which letter each byte value stands for. Windows in English, French, German and Spanish used code page 1252, where é is byte E9 and ü is byte FC; Turkish used 1254, Central European languages 1250 and Cyrillic 1251. An older RTF file stores such letters as \'e9 and \'fc and declares the table once with \ansicpg1252, or per font with \fcharset in the font table. A program that ignores that declaration shows é as é or as a question mark. This tool reads both declarations and decodes every byte with the table the file names; newer files that write letters as \u233 Unicode escapes are handled as well.
What is the difference between RTF and DOCX?
Both hold formatted text, but they are built differently. An RTF file is one plain-text stream of readable control words: nearly every word processor of the last three decades opens it, but tables, styles and images are stored crudely, and a single picture makes the file balloon because it is written out as hexadecimal text. A DOCX is a ZIP package of XML parts and separate image files: smaller and far richer, but readable only by software that understands the package. Convert whichever one you have — DOCX has its own Word to PDF page on this site. For a new document pick DOCX; use RTF only when an older program or system explicitly asks for it.
What comes through, and what is flattened?
Comes through: paragraphs and line breaks, left, centre and right alignment, font size and bold, the bullet or number in front of each list item, page breaks, tabs, and JPEG or PNG images at the size set in the file. Paper size, landscape orientation and margins are read from the file's header; without a header the page is US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) with 1-inch margins on every side.
Flattened: tables are unrolled cell by cell into plain paragraphs without borders; headers, footers, footnotes and field codes (date fields, page numbers) are left out, though the last displayed value of a field is kept; italic, underlined and coloured text is printed in plain black; WMF/EMF drawings, the native Windows picture format, are skipped and the result line counts them. Instead of the fonts named in the file, one font covering the full Latin range is embedded, so a decorative typeface is lost but no accented letter is ever broken.
Why do accented letters break in some programs but not here?
Older RTF files store é, ü, ñ or ç as a single byte from a Windows code page; \ansicpg1252 at the top of the file and \fcharset0 in the font table say which table to use. Software that skips those declarations reads the bytes as something else, and é comes out as é or a question mark — the usual garbling when an RTF crosses from Windows to a Mac or arrives as an email attachment. This tool honours the declaration and decodes every byte with the table the file names; if a font in the font table declares a different character set, text set in that font is decoded with its own table. Central European (1250), Cyrillic (1251), Greek (1253), Turkish (1254), Hebrew, Arabic, Baltic, Vietnamese and Thai code pages are recognised alongside 1252.
Word and other modern programs also write each special letter as a Unicode escape such as \u233, followed by a fallback character for old readers; the tool takes the Unicode value and skips the fallback (\uc says how many characters to skip), so no letter appears twice. Because the letters are drawn with a font embedded in the PDF, the document looks the same wherever it is opened. That font covers Latin scripts only: Cyrillic, Greek or Chinese characters are decoded but printed as question marks, and the result line does not flag this, so check the output yourself when the document is not in a Latin-alphabet language.
Frequently asked questions
Can I convert a document I wrote in WordPad?
Yes. WordPad's default save format is RTF, so pick the file as it is; text, alignment, bold, lists and any photos you pasted end up in the PDF. WordPad was removed from Windows 11 in 2024, which leaves many people with old .rtf files and no program to open them. Converting them here gives you a PDF that opens on any phone or computer.
Why do my tables come out without lines?
In RTF a table is a series of rows in which each cell is marked much like a paragraph. This tool writes the cell texts one under another as plain paragraphs and does not reproduce column widths or borders. That is a deliberate limit: rebuilding the grid means interpreting every measurement in the file, and a wrongly rebuilt table is worse than a plain list of its contents. If the table layout has to survive, open the file in Word, save it as .docx and use the Word to PDF page — or save straight to PDF from Word.
Why were images skipped?
An RTF file can hold pictures in three forms: JPEG, PNG and the Windows-only WMF/EMF drawing formats. The first two are embedded in the PDF unchanged; WMF/EMF is a drawing language the browser cannot render, so those pictures are skipped and the result line says how many. WordPad and older Word versions usually stored a pasted picture as WMF. The fix is to open the file in Word or LibreOffice and paste the picture again as PNG, or to save the document as .docx and convert it on the Word to PDF page.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. Reading the RTF, decoding its control words and building the PDF all happen inside your browser; the file never touches a server. That matters for letters, contract drafts and correspondence with personal details in them. Once the page is open, the conversion works with the internet disconnected.