Download Sample RTF Files (Rich Text Format)

Download free sample RTF files. Developed by Microsoft in 1987, RTF is a cross-platform format readable by almost any text editor. Use these files to test recursive parsing logic (nested groups) and raw hex image handling. STANDARD Cross-Platform Text File Name Contents / Specs Size Action simple_formatting.rtf Basic Styles Contains Bold, Italic, Underline, and multiple…

Download free sample RTF files. Developed by Microsoft in 1987, RTF is a cross-platform format readable by almost any text editor. Use these files to test recursive parsing logic (nested groups) and raw hex image handling.

STANDARD
Cross-Platform Text

File Name Contents / Specs Size Action
simple_formatting.rtf
Basic Styles		 Contains Bold, Italic, Underline, and multiple fonts/colors. Readable by WordPad and TextEdit. 5 KB Download
tables_and_lists.rtf
Structure Test		 Complex layout with nested tables and bullet points. Tests conversion fidelity to HTML/PDF. 20 KB Download
unicode_chars.rtf
Encoding		 RTF handles Unicode poorly (using `\uN` control words). Tests display of Japanese/Emoji characters. 10 KB Download

QA / SECURITY
OLE Objects, Image Bloat & Corruption

Test Case Description Size Action
Image Hex Dump (Bloat) Performance Test. Contains a single high-res image stored as raw Hexadecimal text. Explodes file size and slows down parsers. 25 MB Download
Embedded OLE Object Security Risk. Contains an embedded object (e.g., calculator.exe link). Tests if your viewer blocks external execution. 50 KB Download
Unbalanced Braces Missing a closing curly brace `}`. This causes “stack overflow” or infinite loops in poorly written parsers. 1 KB Download

Technical Specs: RTF

  • 7-bit ASCII: RTF files are safe to transfer over legacy systems because they only use standard ASCII characters. Non-ASCII chars are escaped.
  • Control Words: Formatting is defined by backslashes. \b turns bold on, \b0 turns it off. \par starts a new paragraph.
  • MIME Type: application/rtf or text/rtf.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the RTF file so big compared to DOCX?
DOCX is a compressed ZIP format. RTF is raw text. Furthermore, RTF stores images by converting binary pixels into hexadecimal text (e.g. `FF00A2…`), which doubles the size of the image data.
Can RTF contain viruses?
Yes. While it doesn’t support VBA Macros like Word, it supports “OLE Objects” and memory overflow exploits. Hackers often obfuscate malicious code by inserting random RTF control words that humans can’t see but machines execute.

How to view raw RTF?

RTF is just text. You can open it in standard editors to inspect the control codes.

  • Notepad++ / VS Code: Open the file here to see the {\rtf1\ansi...} headers and inspect potential corruption or malicious code.
  • WordPad: The lightweight native Windows viewer. It handles RTF faster than Microsoft Word.
  • LibreOffice: Useful for converting RTF to PDF via command line.

Developer’s Corner: Extract Plain Text

Don’t try to parse RTF with Regex (it’s recursive!). Use the Python library striprtf to convert it to a clean string.

# Python: RTF to Plain Text
from striprtf.striprtf import rtf_to_textwith open(“document.rtf”, “r”) as f:
content = f.read()
plain_text = rtf_to_text(content)
print(plain_text)

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