⚙️ RTF Export Settings
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Convert every PDF page into an editable Rich Text Format document instantly. Works entirely in your browser — your files are never uploaded to any server.
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The design principles behind this tool — and what to look for in any PDF-to-document converter you use.
RTF is fully editable in every word processor — not a flat image. Your extracted text is ready to revise immediately.
Text is extracted in your browser with PDF.js and assembled into RTF on-device — your PDF never touches a server.
RTF opens in Word, LibreOffice, Pages, Google Docs and beyond — a format that's worked everywhere for 30+ years.
Pick font, size, page-separation style, and exactly which pages to include before you generate the document.
Fast, private, and fully browser-based — everything you need to turn PDF text into an editable Rich Text Format document.
prefers-color-scheme — easy on the eyes day or night.From upload to download in under a minute. No sign-up, no software installation required.
Each export option shapes your final document. Here's what they do and when to use them.
Sets the body text size from 10pt to 16pt. Use 12pt for standard documents, larger for accessibility or presentation copies.
Choose Arial or Calibri for a clean modern look, Times New Roman or Georgia for classic serif documents, Courier New for monospace.
Inserts a real page break between pages, so each PDF page starts fresh in Word — ideal for documents with distinct sections.
Adds a horizontal rule between pages instead of a break — keeps everything on continuous pages but marks page boundaries.
No separator at all — pages flow together as one stream. Best when the PDF's page breaks are arbitrary and you want clean prose.
Names your downloaded RTF. It auto-fills from the PDF's name, but you can set anything — no extension needed, it's added for you.
For the curious: a look at exactly what the tool does between the moment you drop your PDF and the moment your RTF downloads.
When you drop or select a PDF, the browser hands it to JavaScript as a Blob, then an ArrayBuffer. The bytes never touch the network — they exist only in your tab's memory.
Mozilla's PDF.js opens the byte array, decodes its internal object tree, and exposes each page with its text items and their positions.
For each page, getTextContent() returns every text run along with its transform matrix, which includes the Y-coordinate of each piece of text.
Text runs are clustered by Y-coordinate (within ±3px) into lines, so words on the same visual row join up instead of fragmenting.
Each page's text is tokenised on whitespace for a word count, and its length gives the character count — feeding the live stats bar.
The first ~280 characters of each page show in a preview card so you can verify content and spot image-only pages with no text.
Every page starts selected. Tick or untick pages, or use Select All / Deselect All — the stats update to reflect your choices.
Special characters (backslash, braces) and non-ASCII letters are converted to RTF's escape notation, so the document stays valid and Unicode-safe.
A proper RTF header with a font table and your chosen font/size is written, then each page's paragraphs, separated by your chosen break style.
The RTF string is wrapped in a Blob and offered as a download. It opens straight into Word, LibreOffice, or Pages — no upload anywhere.
Understanding Rich Text Format explains why it's such a reliable target for extracting editable text from a PDF.
RTF (Rich Text Format) is a document format where all the formatting is expressed as plain-text control words. Open an RTF file in a text editor and you'll see readable markup like \\b for bold or \\fs24 for font size. That transparency is part of why it's so portable — there's no hidden binary structure to misinterpret.
Microsoft introduced RTF in 1987 as a way to move formatted documents between different applications and platforms. Because the specification was published openly, virtually every word processor — Word, LibreOffice, Apple Pages, Google Docs, WordPad — can read and write it. Three decades on, it remains a dependable lowest-common-denominator format.
Near the start of every RTF file is a font table — a list of the fonts the document uses, each given a number. The body text then references those numbers. This tool writes a font table with Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, Georgia, and Courier New, then points your chosen font's index at the text.
RTF predates Unicode, so non-ASCII characters are encoded with a special \\u escape followed by the character's code point. This tool converts every accented letter, symbol, or non-Latin character into that notation automatically, so your text survives intact in any compliant reader.
This converter extracts the text of your PDF into editable RTF — perfect for documents that are mostly words. It does not reproduce the PDF's exact visual layout, embedded images, or complex multi-column positioning. And like any text tool, it can only extract real text: a scanned, image-only PDF needs OCR first, because there are no text characters to pull out.
How a fixed-layout format and an editable document format ended up paired in browser-based conversion.
Turning locked PDF text into an editable document unlocks all kinds of everyday tasks. Here's where it helps most.
Pull the text out of a PDF you can't edit and revise it freely in Word or LibreOffice as an RTF.
Lift paragraphs from a report or article PDF into a new document without retyping a single word.
Extract passages to quote in essays, papers, or reviews with the text already editable and ready to format.
Get clean editable text out of a PDF so it imports neatly into translation tools that prefer document formats.
RTF text reflows and works with screen readers far better than a fixed-layout PDF — useful for accessible copies.
Turn a PDF template into editable RTF so you can customise names, dates, and details for each recipient.
Keep an editable text copy of important PDFs alongside the original, future-proofed in a universal format.
Convert a PDF newsletter or article into RTF to repost, reformat, or adapt for another channel.
Extract lecture or textbook text into RTF so you can highlight, annotate, and reorganise it in your notes app.
Pull clauses and boilerplate from a PDF contract into an editable document for revising and assembling new agreements.
Recover the text from a PDF resume you no longer have the source for, then edit and re-export it.
Extract text from a PDF to paste into an email or newsletter without manual retyping.
Move PDF content into a modern document workflow by first converting to RTF, then saving as DOCX or anything else.
Writers can recover the editable text of a manuscript that only survives as a PDF export.
Convert statements or notices to RTF for editable records you can search, annotate, and update.
Turn a finished PDF into an editable RTF base you can reuse as a template for similar future documents.
Four ways to hold document text. Here's how they compare so you pick the right target format.
| Property | 📝 RTF | 📘 DOCX | 📃 TXT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Editable text | Yes | Yes | Yes | Locked |
| Keeps formatting | Basic | Rich | None | Exact |
| Universal support | Everywhere | Most apps | Everywhere | Everywhere |
| Human-readable source | Yes | Zipped XML | Yes | Binary |
| Images & tables | Limited | Full | None | Full |
| File size | Medium | Small | Tiny | Varies |
| Fixed layout | No | No | No | Yes |
| Best for | Portable editing | Modern editing | Plain notes | Final sharing |
Small choices that make a noticeable difference in how your converted RTF turns out.
RTF references fonts by name. Choose Arial or Times New Roman for the safest match across Word, LibreOffice, and Pages on any machine.
Use page breaks when each PDF page is a distinct section. Choose continuous text when the PDF's page boundaries are arbitrary and you want flowing prose.
Pages flagged "No text found" are usually scanned images or blanks. Untick them to keep your RTF clean and free of empty gaps.
If the preview shows no text, the PDF is image-only. Run it through OCR to create a text layer, then convert that version to RTF.
The filename auto-fills from your PDF, but rename it to something meaningful so you can find the document later. The .rtf extension is added for you.
Open the RTF in Word or LibreOffice right after converting to confirm the text flowed correctly before you start editing.
The text preview reveals garbled or out-of-order text before you convert. If it looks wrong, the PDF may have unusual encoding.
Choose 14pt or 16pt when making an easy-to-read copy for presentations or readers who need larger text.
The live word and character counts confirm the document has the content you expect — handy for catching missed pages.
Need DOCX? Convert to RTF here, open it in Word, and use Save As to get a .docx with all the text intact.
Change the font, size, or break mode and click convert again — the PDF stays loaded, so there's no need to re-upload.
RTF extraction is one-way. Keep your original PDF so you can re-convert with different settings whenever you need.
Turning locked PDF text into an editable document is routine work across many roles.
Recover the editable text of manuscripts and drafts that only survive as PDF exports.
Pull clauses and boilerplate from PDF contracts into editable documents for revising and assembling agreements.
Extract lecture and textbook text into RTF to highlight, annotate, and reorganise in notes apps.
Get clean editable text out of a PDF so it imports neatly into translation tools and CAT software.
Convert memos, notices, and templates from PDF to RTF for editing and reuse across the team.
Extract passages from paper PDFs to quote, cite, and synthesise into literature reviews.
Lift text from press-release and report PDFs into editable copy for articles and stories.
Repurpose the text of a PDF brochure or one-pager into new editable content for other channels.
Recover and edit a resume that only exists as a PDF, then tailor it for each application.
Get author-submitted PDF text into an editable format for proofing, markup, and layout.
Extract text from statements and notices into editable records for notes and summaries.
Produce reflowable, screen-reader-friendly RTF copies of fixed-layout PDF documents.
Transparency matters. Here's exactly what happens when you use this converter.
This tool uses PDF.js by Mozilla to read your PDF and extract its text, then assembles the RTF document with plain JavaScript — all of which runs entirely inside your browser tab. Your PDF is read from your device, processed in memory, and the finished RTF is downloaded back to you without ever leaving your machine.
That means the tool never needs to upload your file to a server to convert it. Speed depends on your device's CPU and memory, not on a remote service.
Although the conversion logic is local, modern websites do receive normal browser metadata such as your IP address, user agent, and referrer. If you're working with sensitive material — contracts, IDs, medical records — it's always smart to verify how a tool behaves. You can open your browser's developer tools and inspect the Network tab while converting to confirm no PDF data is being sent externally.
For background reading on browser security and safe handling of personal files, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's privacy resources.
This tool reads ordinary PDFs. It does not crack passwords or strip protection from encrypted files. If your PDF is password-protected, remove the password in a PDF application you trust first, then convert the unprotected copy.
When you close the tab or clear the PDF, the file bytes and extracted text are discarded automatically. There's no account, no cloud storage, no history. Save your downloaded RTF before closing the tab if you want to keep it.
Don't take our word for it. Press F12 (or Cmd+Option+I on Mac) to open developer tools, switch to the Network tab, then drop a PDF and run a conversion. You'll see the page's own assets loading, but no outbound request carrying your PDF bytes — the hallmark of a true client-side tool.
Rough expectations based on page count and word density. RTF stores only text plus light markup, so files stay small even for long documents.
| Document Size | Pages | Approx. Words | RTF File Size | Conversion Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short note | 1–2 | ~300–700 | ~5–15 KB | Under 1 second |
| Article / letter | 3–6 | ~1,500–3,500 | ~20–60 KB | 1–2 seconds |
| Report | 10–25 | ~5,000–12,000 | ~80–250 KB | 2–5 seconds |
| Long document | 40–80 | ~20,000–40,000 | ~400 KB–1 MB | 5–12 seconds |
| Book-length | 150+ | 75,000+ | ~1.5–4 MB | 15–40 seconds |
Figures are approximate and depend on word density and how many non-ASCII characters need Unicode escaping.
A lot of confusion surrounds converting PDFs to editable documents. Here are the most common myths and the truth.
RTF carries real formatting — fonts, sizes, bold, page breaks — via control words. It's far richer than a flat TXT file.
Some do, but this one extracts text entirely in your browser with PDF.js. Confirm it in the DevTools Network tab in seconds.
Conversion extracts editable text, not the PDF's exact visual layout. Expect clean text, not a pixel-perfect replica.
A scanned PDF is images, with no text to extract. You'll see "No text found" until you run OCR on it first.
This tool never adds watermarks. Your RTF is clean, editable, and ready for professional use immediately.
RTF opens in LibreOffice, Apple Pages, Google Docs, WordPad, and virtually every word processor on any platform.
Every page has a checkbox. Include one page, a few, or all — and preview each before deciding.
The tool escapes non-ASCII characters into RTF's Unicode notation, so accents and symbols survive intact.
If your output doesn't look the way you expected, one of these is usually the cause.
The PDF is almost certainly a scanned, image-only document. Fix: run it through OCR (optical character recognition) to add a text layer, then convert that version. The preview will then show real text.
Some PDFs use unusual font encodings or store text in an odd order. Fix: check the preview first; if it's scrambled there, the source PDF's encoding is the issue. Try a different export of the original document if you have it.
Text extraction reads by vertical position, so side-by-side columns can interleave. Fix: for complex multi-column layouts, expect to do some manual reordering in your word processor after converting.
Password-protected PDFs can't be parsed without the password. Fix: remove the protection in a PDF app first, then upload the unprotected copy to convert.
Most accented and non-Latin characters are escaped correctly, but a rare glyph may not map cleanly. Fix: open the RTF in your word processor and do a quick find-and-replace for any stray characters.
Very long PDFs take time to extract page by page. Fix: let the progress bar finish, close other heavy tabs, or convert a selection of pages at a time on lower-powered devices.
Rarely, a download is interrupted or the app doesn't recognise the extension. Fix: re-download, and open with Word or LibreOffice directly via File → Open if double-clicking doesn't work.
You may have chosen "No Separator — Continuous Text." Fix: re-export with "Insert Page Break" or "Insert Divider Line" selected to mark page boundaries clearly.
Need to convert to other formats? Try these free online tools.
Curated links to authoritative documentation if you want to go deeper into the formats and technology behind this tool.
\\u escape notation for non-ASCII text.Short, friendly definitions for the terms you'll meet when converting PDFs to editable documents.
\\b for bold or \\fs24 for font size.\\u followed by a numeric code point.\\page) that forces the following text onto a new page.\\ansi) at the start of an RTF file for compatibility.Everything you need to know about converting PDF files to Rich Text Format.