WHAT THE HECK IS RTF?

...a reporter on a different CAT system...

Wait, don't give up on this reporter yet. Let me give you some info on RTF files and maybe you can work it out.

First of all, you said it opens in Word and looks like a transcript. Why are you opening it in Word? Is your browser automatically doing that? That's what's creating your problem with the RTF file.

If your browser is set to automatically open all .rtf files in Word, you either need to (1) change that association (Edit/Preferences/Applications) or (2) have the reporter zip or rename the file before she sends it.

RTF, which means "rich text format," does indeed have the capability to be opened in a word processor. However, once you do that, you lose forever the traits it needs to have to be imported by a CAT system with steno intact. Even if you close the file without saving it and then try to import it, it won't work. I ran across this just last week where a reporter I always have RTF success with decided to open the RTF file (in a word processor) before she sent it to add some spellings at the beginning of the job. When I imported the RTF file, it had no steno; it was literally a "text" file, an ASCII with an .rtf extension. So I asked her to redo her conversion and *not* open it in Word, and then it worked fine as always.

If your browser has associated .rtf files with Word and you don't know how to (or don't want to) change the association, your reporter can either zip it before sending it to you or change the file extension. Zipping is the best way, but if your reporter (or you) has trouble with that, ask her to rename the file to .xyz. With an .xyz extension, the browser will not have an application associated with it and will prompt you to assign one or save the file. So save the file and just rename it back to the .rtf extension. Then you can import it into your CAT system.

Remember the golden rule of computers: They keep doing what we tell them to do, not what we *want* them to do. The problem you are having is happening for a reason, you just have to identify that reason and give the computer (and the reporter) the right instructions.

I hope this wasn't too confusing. :)