---
title: "RTF to Markdown"
description: "Drop a legacy .rtf file and get Markdown back. Bold, italic, lists and links are carried over; nothing is uploaded and no desktop office suite is needed."
url: https://findutils.com/convert/rtf-to-markdown/
category: convert
---

# RTF to Markdown

Drop a legacy .rtf file and get Markdown back. Bold, italic, lists and links are carried over; nothing is uploaded and no desktop office suite is needed.

**Use this tool:** [RTF to Markdown](https://findutils.com/convert/rtf-to-markdown/)

## Programmatic access

- REST id `rtf-to-markdown`: POST https://api.findutils.com/api/tools/rtf-to-markdown/execute (reference: https://findutils.com/api/rtf-to-markdown/)
- MCP tool `rtf_to_markdown` on https://mcp.findutils.com (reference: https://findutils.com/mcp/rtf-to-markdown/)

## Why convert RTF to Markdown?

RTF is the format a file ends up in when someone chose "Save as" and picked the option that works everywhere. WordPad wrote it, old mail clients exported it, and forms and legacy line-of-business systems still produce it. It is readable rich text and it is nobody's working format, so getting the content out usually means opening Word or LibreOffice, saving as something else, and converting again from there. Since RTF is plain text underneath — control words and braces rather than a binary package — the conversion can happen in the tab instead.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is my document uploaded?

No. The file is read in your browser with the File API and converted in the tab. Nothing is sent to a server, which you can confirm in your browser's network tab.

### Does it keep images?

No. Images embedded in an RTF file are skipped, and there is no image extraction in this version. If the document is mainly pictures, very little text will come out.

### What about tables?

Table structure is not reconstructed. The text inside a table may come through as paragraphs, but the rows and columns are lost. A document that is mostly a table is not a good fit for this converter.

### I have an old .doc file. Will this read it?

No. A .doc is a binary format, not RTF, and the converter refuses it rather than producing garbage. Open it once in Word or LibreOffice and save as .rtf or .docx.

### Why did my headings come out as plain paragraphs?

Headings are detected from the outline level a document records for a paragraph. Files written by simpler editors often carry no outline information, so a line that merely looks like a heading — larger and bold — converts as bold text.

### Are accented characters and smart quotes preserved?

Yes. Unicode escapes decode exactly, and code-page escapes are decoded as Windows-1252, which is what nearly every RTF file in circulation declares. A file declaring an unusual code page may mis-map a few high characters.

### What happens to underlined text?

It comes through as plain text. Markdown has no underline, and emitting a raw tag would put HTML into a Markdown file, so the formatting is dropped rather than approximated.

### Can I paste RTF instead of uploading a file?

Yes. Switch to the paste box and paste the markup, starting with {\rtf1. It is the same converter either way.

### How large a file can it take?

Up to about 10 MB of RTF source. Because RTF stores images as hex text, a picture-heavy file can be far larger than its page count suggests.

## Related Tools

- [DOCX to Markdown](https://findutils.com/convert/docx-to-markdown/)
- [ODT to Markdown](https://findutils.com/convert/odt-to-markdown/)
- [HTML to Markdown](https://findutils.com/convert/html-to-markdown/)
- [Markdown to HTML](https://findutils.com/convert/markdown-to-html/)
- [Markdown to Word](https://findutils.com/convert/markdown-to-word/)
- [DOCX Metadata Remover](https://findutils.com/security/docx-metadata-remover/)