TXT
TXT Plain Text File
The TXT format is a universal plain text file, containing unformatted text characters. It is highly compatible across all operating systems and devices.
What is TXT Plain Text File?
A TXT file is a standard plain text document that stores text without any special formatting, such as bold, italics, or images. It primarily uses ASCII or Unicode character encodings to represent text. While not attributed to a single creator, the concept of plain text files is fundamental to computing, evolving from early character encoding standards. TXT files are widely used for simple notes, logs, configuration files, and source code.
Advantages
- Universal compatibility across all systems.
- Extremely small file size.
- Fast to open and edit.
- No risk of macro viruses or embedded malicious content.
- Easy to parse and process programmatically.
Limitations
- No text formatting (bold, italics, font sizes).
- Cannot embed images, videos, or other objects.
- Limited aesthetic appeal for presentations or formal documents.
- Does not support complex layouts or tables natively.
How to open TXT Plain Text File files
Notepad (Windows)
TextEdit (macOS)
Vim / Nano (Linux/Unix)
Visual Studio Code
Sublime Text
Any web browser (displays raw text)
Common use cases
- Writing simple notes or to-do lists.
- Storing configuration files for software.
- Creating README files for software projects.
- Logging data from applications or systems.
- Converting complex documents (like PDF, DOCX, HTML) to extract only their text content using ConvertX.
Explore other formats
Frequently asked questions
TXT files contain only plain text without any formatting, while DOCX files support rich text formatting, images, tables, and other embedded objects.
No, TXT files cannot contain executable code or macros, making them inherently safe from macro viruses.
You can use the ConvertX pdf-to-txt converter to extract the plain text content from a PDF document into a TXT file.
Yes, TXT files are commonly used for writing source code in various programming languages due to their simplicity and universal compatibility with code editors.
Converting to TXT, for example using docx-to-txt or html-to-txt on ConvertX, allows you to strip all formatting and extract only the raw text, which is useful for data analysis, search indexing, or compatibility.