TextEdit Help

Welcome to TextEdit

Create and edit plain text, rich text, and HTML documents.

An RTF file open in the TextEdit window, with green heading text in a larger font size and green and black body text in smaller font sizes.

Convert rich text documents to other formats

With TextEdit, you can open and edit rich text documents created in other word processing apps, including Microsoft and Open Office. You can also save your documents in a different format, so they’re compatible with other apps. To save a file in a new format, choose File > Save, then click the File Format pop-up menu and choose a format.

Create and edit HTML documents

You don’t need a special app to write or edit HTML code—just use TextEdit. To always open HTML files in code-editing mode, choose TextEdit > Preferences, click Open and Save, and select “Display HTML files as HTML code instead of formatted text.”

An image with a heart drawn on it using the Markup tools.

Mark up images

You can write or draw on images in your text files using the tools in the Markup toolbar—for example, to provide feedback to a coworker. Click , then click Markup to view the tools.

Want to learn more? See Save a document, Work with HTML documents, and Annotate images.

Helpful?