How can I strip away formatting from an RTF file?

[Gregory Lypny]

Hi everyone,

I imported an RTF file and put it into a field using

   set the RTFText of field "File Text" to url ("file:" & longFileName)

Of course, the text in the field is formatted as in the file that was imported. How can I import the text while stripping away the formatting, which I do not need?

Gregory