I use RTF files for delivering download links on my digital products whenever I can't upload the actual files directly. It's a helpful alternative that's commonplace practice in the digital realm, although different sellers may use different types of documents to do the same thing.
So what exactly is an RTF file?
Basically it is just a simplified document file, a sort of up-scaled version of the TXT file. What makes it useful is that it is a universal document type that can be opened in a wide variety of word processing software on either PC, Mac or Linux. It means the file is easily shareable to absolutely anyone.
I like using it for that very reason, but it's also super quick for me to make and save the file too. As an added security bonus, RTF files cannot transmit viruses or malware (unlike word or pdf docs). So it's a super safe file type to use when sharing really simple data.
How do you open an RTF file?
The first thing you should try is to just double-click (or tap on mobile) to open the RTF file directly.
You likely have an app already built-in or installed on your system for opening RTF files. To start with, if you’ve got any word processing app installed—Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, AbiWord, for example—you can open an RTF file with it.
Most file services—like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive; will have built in viewers that let you at least read an RTF file, while Google Docs also lets you edit RTF files.
And most operating systems will have a built-in editor that can open RTF files. In Windows, that would be WordPad and in Mac it's TextEdit or Apple Pages.
If you prefer that an RTF file opens with a different app than the one currently set as your default program you can easily change that to your preferred app. On Windows or Mac, just right-click the file and you’ll see an “Open With” command or something similar for choosing the app you want to use. Change your default app for RTF files by selecting the “always use this app to open .rtf files” option.
And that's all there is to it. Simple and easy peasy. :)
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