Convert PDF to RTF Online Free
Convert PDF to RTF for free and keep headings, bold, italic, fonts, colours, links, pictures and page breaks. OCR for scanned pages. No upload, no sign-up.
- Free, no sign-up
- Files stay on your device
- No watermark
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How to convert PDF to RTF
Upload one PDF, or several to convert them in one go.
Check the live preview, pick Keep formatting or Clean document, and choose pages if you like.
Click Convert to RTF and download the file, ready for Word, LibreOffice, WordPad or Pages.
Why convert PDF to RTF with BestConverter
Formatting that survives
Paragraphs are rebuilt from the PDF layout, and fonts, sizes, bold, italic, superscript, text colours, alignment, indents, clickable links, pictures and page breaks are carried over to the RTF.
Real headings
Titles are detected from their size and weight and saved as Heading 1-3 styles, so the navigation pane and an automatic table of contents work as soon as you open the file in Word.
OCR for scanned PDFs
Pages without a text layer can be read with OCR in more than 35 languages, kept as pictures or skipped. Recognition runs on your device, and the language data is downloaded once and then cached.
Private, free and unlimited
Your PDFs are processed in your browser and never uploaded. No account, no email, no watermark and no page limit. Password-protected PDFs open with their password, on your device.
PDF to RTF: turn a PDF into an editable document
RTF (Rich Text Format) is a simple, open document format that almost every word processor can open and edit. Converting a PDF to RTF lets you change text, reuse paragraphs or update an old document without retyping it. BestConverter does the conversion in your browser, so the file stays on your device.
How the converter rebuilds your document
- Paragraphs, not broken lines: lines are joined back into paragraphs using line spacing, indents, bullets and sentence ends, and words hyphenated at the end of a line are put back together.
- Text styles: fonts, sizes, bold, italic, superscript, subscript and text colours are read from the PDF and written to the RTF.
- Headings and layout: large or bold titles become real heading styles; centred, right-aligned and justified paragraphs, indents and page size are kept.
- Pictures, links and pages: images are embedded, web links stay clickable and every PDF page can start on a new page.
- Unicode: accented letters, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Asian scripts are saved correctly.
Options for every kind of PDF
Preview the result page by page before converting, choose only the pages you need, switch to a single font such as Calibri, Arial or Times New Roman, or remove repeated headers, footers and page numbers. For scanned PDFs, OCR recognises the text in the language you choose, at fast, standard or high resolution; pages can also be kept as pictures. Several PDFs can be converted in one batch, each into its own RTF file.
Good to know
PDF stores positioned text rather than a document structure, so complex layouts such as forms, tables and text boxes become normal paragraphs. If you need a .docx file with the same content, use PDF to Word; for plain text without any formatting, PDF to Text is simpler.
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Frequently asked questions
What programs can open an RTF file?
Rich Text Format opens in Microsoft Word, WordPad, LibreOffice and OpenOffice Writer, Apple Pages and TextEdit, WPS Office and most other word processors. You can also upload it to Google Docs to edit it there.
Keep formatting or Clean document: which should I choose?
Keep formatting reproduces the look of the PDF: original fonts and sizes, colours, alignment, indents and the spacing between paragraphs. Clean document uses one font and tidy standard spacing, and keeps headings, bold, italic, lists, links and pictures but drops colours and indents, which makes it easier to restyle and edit.
Can I convert a scanned PDF to editable RTF?
Yes. When a page has no text layer, the converter offers OCR: pick the language of the document and the text is recognised on your device. You can also keep scanned pages as pictures or skip them. OCR quality depends on the scan; clean, straight pages at 200 dpi or more work best.
Does PDF to RTF keep tables and columns?
Text is converted into flowing paragraphs in reading order. Two-column pages often come out in the right order, and table cells on one row are separated by tabs, but RTF tables, text boxes and exact positions are not recreated. For tables, PDF to Excel is the better choice.
Are images and links included in the RTF?
Photos and figures are embedded in the RTF as JPEG or PNG at up to 1800 pixels, and web links stay clickable. You can turn both off in More options, for example to get a smaller file.
Is it safe to convert a PDF to RTF online here?
Yes. The PDF is read, converted and saved entirely in your browser, and nothing is sent to us. The only downloads are the converter itself and, when you use OCR, the language data for the chosen language.