Convert Word 97–2003 (DOC) to Rich Text
Free online converter for Word 97–2003 (DOC) files. Portable formatted text interchange format. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.
Drag and drop your files
or
Upload a Word 97–2003 (DOC) file to convert it to Rich Text. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.
Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.
About DOC and RTF
Word 97–2003 (DOC) .doc
Word's pre-2007 binary format. Still common in long-lived archives, and still readable, but superseded by DOCX for nearly twenty years.
Good for
- Readable by very old Office installations
- Common throughout older document archives
Trade-offs
- Opaque binary format with a difficult history
- Larger than the equivalent DOCX
- Newer features simply do not exist in it
application/msword
Rich Text .rtf
Rich Text Format: formatted text stored as readable plain text markup. A lowest common denominator that almost every word processor understands.
Good for
- Opens in essentially any word processor, on any platform
- Keeps basic formatting where plain text cannot
- Human-readable if you open it in an editor
Trade-offs
- Much larger than DOCX for the same content
- No modern layout features
- Images balloon the file size
application/rtf
DOC and RTF side by side
| DOC | RTF | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Binary, uncompressed | Plain text markup |
| Animation | No | No |
| Typically used for | Legacy archives and older Office files | Exchange between unlike word processors |
What changes when you convert DOC to RTF
Rendered by LibreOffice
The conversion runs through headless LibreOffice — the same engine behind the desktop suite, not a lookalike parser. It handles ordinary documents faithfully. Where it can drift is on the elaborate: a document leaning on fonts the server does not have will have them substituted, and the substitute rarely occupies exactly the same width, so line and page breaks can move. Heavily designed layouts are worth checking against the original.
RTF carries less than it looks like it does
Rich Text Format dates from 1987 and exists so that any word processor can open a file with its formatting broadly intact. Bold, italics, fonts and simple tables survive. Modern structure does not: tracked changes, comments, footnotes in some layouts and anything embedded tend to be dropped or flattened. Choose it for interchange with something old, not as a working format.
DOC is the pre-2007 binary format
Microsoft replaced DOC with its XML-based successor in Office 2007, and support has been quietly eroding since — recent versions of Office block these files by default on security grounds, because the old binary format can carry macros in ways that are hard to inspect. Converting is usually the right move for anything you intend to keep. Macros are not carried across.
Comments and tracked changes
Editorial metadata is the first thing to go in a format conversion: comments, tracked changes and revision history rarely have an equivalent in RTF and are generally dropped or flattened into the text. Treat the output as a clean copy of the current state of the document. If the review history matters, keep the DOC alongside it.