How to Convert PDF to RTF (Editable Rich Text, Free)

Convert a PDF into editable rich text (RTF) that opens in Word, WordPad or LibreOffice. Honest guide: what converts well, what doesn't, and free alternatives.

Convert a PDF into an editable RTF document — Locked PDF in → editable rich text out

Someone sent you a PDF and you need to actually work with the text — rewrite a clause, reuse three paragraphs, update a price list. PDF is built for reading, not editing. RTF (Rich Text Format) is the opposite: a plain, universally readable editing format that opens in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs, WordPad, Apple TextEdit — practically anything written in the last 30 years.

Converting PDF → RTF gives you that editable text back. Here's how to do it, and — just as important — what to realistically expect from the output.

How to convert PDF to RTF — step by step

Open the tool

Go to pdfty.com/tools/pdf-to-rtf. No account, no watermark.

Upload your PDF

Drag the file in. Free up to 20 MB and 50 pages, 10 operations per day.

Convert

The text, formatting and images are extracted and rebuilt as a rich-text document. A few seconds for typical files.

Download the RTF

Open it in Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs — anything. The text is fully editable.

Tidy up and save

Expect to fix some spacing or a table. Your files are deleted from the server within 1 hour.

The pdfty PDF to RTF tool — The PDF to RTF tool — editable rich text out of a fixed PDF.

Honest expectations: what converts well, what doesn't

A PDF stores positioned glyphs on fixed pages — it doesn't know what a paragraph, column or table is. Any PDF-to-editable conversion has to infer that structure back. The inference is good, not magic.

Content	How it converts to RTF	Notes
Plain paragraphs of text	Source PDF	Excellent — clean editable paragraphs
Bold, italic, font sizes, colors	Source PDF	Good — character formatting carries over
Embedded images	Source PDF	Good — placed near their original position
Simple tables	Source PDF	Fair — usually recognisable, may need realignment
Multi-column layouts, text boxes	Source PDF	Approximate — reading order is kept, exact placement isn't
Forms, headers/footers, footnotes	Source PDF	Approximate — often become plain body text
Scanned pages (no text layer)	Source PDF	Nothing to extract — run OCR first

The right mental model: you're getting the content, reliably, in an editable form — not a facsimile of the page. For a letter, a report or an article, the RTF will be 95% there. For a magazine spread or a dense invoice, plan on a few minutes of cleanup.

Free local alternatives

LibreOffice Writer. Writer can open many PDFs directly (it routes them to Draw by default, so use Writer explicitly or accept per-line text frames). Honest verdict: fine for grabbing text, clumsy for real editing.
Microsoft Word. File → Open a PDF and Word converts it to an editable document, which you can then Save As → RTF. Quality is good for text-heavy files; requires a Word license.
Google Docs. Upload the PDF to Drive, Open with Google Docs, then File → Download → Rich Text Format (.rtf). Decent for simple documents; images and layout fidelity are hit-and-miss.
Copy-paste. For a paragraph or two, selecting text in any PDF viewer and pasting into your editor is the fastest route of all — only the formatting is lost.

Practical gotchas

Scanned PDFs yield empty output. If the PDF is a photo of a page, there's no text to extract. Run it through OCR first to add a text layer, then convert; our guide to free OCR for PDFs covers accuracy expectations.

Fonts are matched, not embedded. RTF references fonts by name. If the PDF used a font you don't have installed, your editor substitutes one — text is intact, line breaks may shift.

Hyphenation artefacts. Words the PDF broke across lines ("conver-sion") are rejoined where possible, but the occasional stray hyphen survives. A quick find-and-replace cleans these up.

Hyperlinks and bookmarks. Link text survives; clickable link targets and PDF bookmarks generally don't make it into RTF.

File size. RTF stores images uncompressed-ish (hex-encoded), so an image-heavy PDF can become a surprisingly large RTF. Text-only documents convert to tiny files.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between RTF and DOCX output?

Both are editable. DOCX is the modern Word format with better support for complex layout, styles and tables; RTF is older, simpler and opens in practically everything, including ancient software. If you have no specific reason to need RTF, use PDF to Word.

Will the RTF look exactly like my PDF?

No — and no converter can honestly promise that. Content, formatting and images come through; precise page geometry is approximated. The goal of RTF is editability, not visual fidelity. If you need the exact look, keep the PDF.

My converted file is almost empty. Why?

Your PDF is almost certainly a scan — pages stored as images, with no text layer. Run OCR on it first, then convert the OCR'd PDF to RTF.

Can I edit the RTF on my phone?

Yes — Word, Google Docs and most mobile office apps open RTF. That universality is the format's main selling point.

Is it free, and what are the limits?

Free: 20 MB per file, 50 pages, 10 operations a day, no watermark, no sign-up. Pro ($9/month) lifts the limits. Files are deleted from the server within 1 hour.

Does it work with password-protected PDFs?

Not directly. Remove the password first with Unlock (you'll need to know the password), then convert.

Can I convert the RTF back to PDF when I'm done editing?

Yes — RTF to PDF turns your edited file back into a fixed, shareable PDF.

Will tables survive?

Simple grids usually convert into real RTF tables. Complex tables — merged cells, nested layouts, invoices — come through recognisably but typically need manual realignment in your editor.