My cousin is trying to do online labs for his college, but he has a MAC and his computer won't open the .RTF files. I am unable to go to him nor do I have a lot of experience with MACs. Wondering if any blades knew how to open .RTF files on a mac. thanks he says TextEdit isn't working nor dragging them over Safari for Safari to try and read it.
RTF is "Rich Text Format", the format used by Windows WordPad since Windows XP, I think. Also a few other programs write RTFs, since RTF is a more "open" standard than MS Word (".doc")... although arguably less widely used due to its usage in low-key built-in apps like WordPad. (kinda self-defeating) So let's see, with that in mind, let's google that... first result from echoone.com, hmm... that's just a bunch of random and incoherent information, man that site sucks. Next. macshareware.com, that looks like just a download spam site, not even clicking that. Next. osxfaq.com, that... no, I don't need opinions on comparison, how is that even relevant? Next. What? No, next... no... OK, what the hell. "Discussions" option. Someone's gotta have asked this shit before. No, not Safari... next... no, what the, "Favorite OS X apps"? What the F, Google? Next... OK, let's try that, how to open MS created RTFs. HMm... mhmm... mm? mm... mrughh. No, nothing. What? Word is supposed to be able to open them? What's this about RTF being an absolute certainty... I think that guy has RTF mixed up with TXT... TXT is absolute certainty plain-text, but RTF is kinda funky and still a binary format. Weird thread. Guy can't post an example? I wonder if it's maybe greyed out in the programs these guys are trying to use. Maybe this'll help? Ugh, whatever, wait, I was looking for apps, WTF, how does the internet have no apps for opening RTFs on a Mac? Makes no sense. Maybe Macs have RTF support built into textedit or whatever. I think so, right? I've opened RTFs on a Mac before... strange. Google, you're shit. Stop being shit, Google. Making it a pain in the ass to find info on the 'net. Anyway. Well fuck, I have a Mac sitting down here right now. Old POS Mac but still a Mac. Let's fire it up and see how it chokes on an RTF. Pop in flash drive... search... RTF... open it. Camera tiem. photoshop, blank a little this out here, shoopdawhoop thatta over there... k nao saev. Imageshack, upload, resize. Post, advanced, attach, browse. Link. K, so, where... what now?
open RTF files by double clicking on them. They will open up in the default RTF editor (usually TE, for me it's Nisus Writer Pro). RTF files are an open file format. They are common, and used by every system that edits text files and needs formatting. If TextEdit is not working then s/he has screwed something up. I would suggest a couple of things. 1. change the extension to DOC try and open 2. change the extension to RTFD and try to open it. If that doesn't work change the extension back and do this 3. open the file up in a text editor like TextWrangler, or TextMate, or even VI. You are looking for the first line and the first characters. If it's an RTF doc it will start with {\rtf1 (other possibles \rtf2 etc...) that will be followed by usually \ansi and \mac or \MS. If you see a bunch of gibberish and then normal text, that's most likely a DOC file. If the first like starts with PK, it's most likely a PAGES file. There is an outside change it may be a PDF, if it is then the first line will start with PDF. If you don't see any of these, then you need to find the first few characters on the first line (usually in the first 5 or 6 characters) and look up the extension. Change to appropriate file type. If none of that works. Try this: Click once on the .rtf file. Press ⌘ + I (info), then under "Open with:" select TextEdit in the dropdown. Click change all. That should do it.