RTF MIME Type

About Rich Text Format files

RTF is plain text with control words such as \b for bold, readable by almost every word processor. Both application/rtf and text/rtf are registered; prefer application/rtf, because with text/ some clients may display the raw markup instead of handing it to a word processor.

Other types seen for these files: text/rtf . Accept them when reading uploads, but send application/rtf yourself.

File signature

RTF files start with 7B 5C 72 74 66 ("{\rtf"). The extension and the type a browser reports for an upload both come from the file name, so check these bytes on the server before trusting a file.

Serve .rtf with the right Content-Type

Content-Type: application/rtf

application/rtf rtf;

AddType application/rtf .rtf

@rtf path *.rtf
header @rtf Content-Type "application/rtf"

curl -sI https://example.com/file.rtf | grep -i '^content-type'
# Content-Type: application/rtf

Set the type in code

res.set('Content-Type', 'application/rtf');
// Or make the browser download it:
res.attachment('file.rtf');

import mimetypes

mimetypes.add_type('application/rtf', '.rtf')  # if your system doesn't know it
mimetypes.guess_type('file.rtf')[0]  # 'application/rtf'

mime.AddExtensionType(".rtf", "application/rtf")
w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/rtf")

Accept .rtf uploads

<input type="file" accept=".rtf,application/rtf">

The accept attribute only filters the file picker; users can still choose another file. Listing the extension as well as the type matters, because operating systems don’t always report the type you expect.

Related types

• .doc (application/msword): Word 97–2003 document
• .docx (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document): Word document
• .txt (text/plain): Plain text

More documents

.pdf , .xls , .xlsx , .ppt , .pptx , .odt , .epub . Look up any extension or type with the MIME type lookup.

Sources

• IANA registration: application/rtf
• MDN: Common media types

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Frequently asked questions