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ryanb71
June 23, 2025
Question

Using Rich Text Format

  • June 23, 2025
  • 5 replies
  • 0 views

I have a client request to look into the capabilities of converting Rich Text Format (RTF) into HTML. This is not regular rich text encoding, it's the older version of it. A sample might look something such as this 

"{\rtf1\ansi\deff0 {\fonttbl {\f0 Times New Roman;}} \f0\fs24 Hello, world!}"

I cannot seem to find any information on interactions between Appian and RTF. All of my searches return information relating to Appian's new rich text editor components. Is this something that simply does not exist? Was RTF deemed "too old" for Appian to work with it? Any information on the topic would be a huge help, even if it's just confirmation that there is nothing that currently handles RTF within Appian.

5 replies

stefanhelzle0001
stefanhelzle0001
June 23, 2025

There is no support for RTF in Appian.

In case you think about building a plugin, this does not seem to be overly complicated.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22387099/converting-rtf-to-html-with-format-in-java

mikes0011
mikes0011
Brainy
June 24, 2025

this does not seem to be overly complicated.

I'd be surprised if some version of that couldn't be accomplished in an OOB expression rule, too.  Other than the possibility of format nesting (which is still solvable), it looks like it might just be a matter of 1:1 text replacements with the HTML-style text tags that the Styled Text Editor (for example) uses.

R
ryanb71Author
June 24, 2025

I had thought about that myself as well. However, I would be incredibly concerned about how easy and/or efficient it would be to parse the tags out from the regular text. That is something I will bring up with the client to see if they would have any interest in moving forward with it. Thank you.

harshas2775
harshas2775
June 24, 2025

You can look into Aspose Word Functionalities plugin which enables conversion of RTF documents into HTML using 'Conversion' Smart Service. 

R
ryanb71Author
June 24, 2025

Unfortunately, the current use case is that the RTF is not in document format, but instead in marked up plain text format and thus from what I am seeing, this plugin will not be useful for us.

Thank you though! I was not able to find any plugins that mentioned RTF, so I will at least keep this one in mind if any of the scenarios change.

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