Thanks bitspill, unchecked the hide extension box and deleted rft, then when prompted which file ending keep 'rtf' or use 'conf' i selected 'conf'. Am getting an error message about parse configuration file, any ideas how to solve this?

It looks as though some of the rtf formatting tags are still in the document. Can you now open the file in a plain text editor and delete the offending lines. Notepad++ works well for that on windows not sure what you have on a mac though
TextEdit can save documents as plain text. Since it sounds like it was saving as rich text, what you should do
theColj, is go to the Format menu and click "make plain text" and that will convert it for you.