.ODT File Extension

OpenDocument Text Document

Developer OASIS
Popularity
3.5  |  443 Votes
 
NEW: Open your .ODT file online with File Helper.View Online

What is an ODT file?

An ODT file is an OpenDocument text document, created by LibreOffice Writer, OpenOffice Writer, or another word processor. You can open an ODT file with Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, or Google Docs. Those programs can convert ODT files to DOCX, DOC, PDF, and other document formats.

More Information

Screenshot of a .odt file in Apache OpenOffice Writer 4
ODT file open in Apache OpenOffice Writer 4

ODT files can contain resumes, essays, research papers, letters, manuscripts, or other documents created by a word processor. The ODT format is most often associated with LibreOffice Writer and Apache OpenOffice Writer, which are free alternatives to Microsoft Word.

Typically, students (and others who do not want to purchase Microsoft Word) use Writer to create ODT files. They then use these files in place of Word .DOCX files.

Writer includes many of the same document formatting and editing tools as Word. Therefore, just like DOCX files, ODT files can contain formatted text, inserted images, drawn objects, and inserted tables.

Technical information

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) maintains the OpenDocument standard, which is XML-based. ODT files are Zip-compressed files that contain .XML files and other data used to show a document.

How to open an ODT file

You can open an ODT file with many popular word processors, including:

These programs also let you convert ODT files to other formats. Note that you may lose some formatting if you open an ODT file in a program other than LibreOffice or OpenOffice or convert an ODT file to another format.

How to convert an ODT file

Various word processing applications, including LibreOffice Writer, Microsoft Word, and Corel WordPerfect, can convert ODT files to other formats.

For example, LibreOffice Writer can convert ODT files to the following formats:

  • .DOCX - Microsoft Word Document
  • .DOC - Microsoft Word Document (Legacy)
  • .PDF - Portable Document Format
  • .RTF - Rich Text Format
  • .TXT - Plain Text
  • .EPUB - Open eBook File
  • .HTML - HTML Webpage
  • .XML - Extensible Markup Language
  • .UOT - Uniform Office Document
  • .OTT - OpenDocument Document Template

Programs that open ODT files

Origin Dialog Theme

Developer OriginLab
Popularity
2.8  |  32 Votes
 

An ODT file may also be a dialog theme used by OriginLab Origin, a data analysis and graphing application. It contains analysis dialog box settings that control how a dialog box receives, analyzes, and outputs data. ODT files are saved in XML format, but they are not meant to be opened outside Origin.

More Information

Scientists and engineers across a variety of fields use Origin to import, analyze, and graph data. While analyzing data, users can open various dialog boxes that manipulate data in different ways. These dialog boxes have many settings a user can customize.

If a user wants to save the settings they've entered in a dialog box, they can select the triangle button that appears to the right of the Dialog Theme field and select Save As.... This saves the user's current settings as a dialog theme, or ODT file.

Users can save multiple themes for the same dialog box, and they can select from those themes using the triangle button. Users can also choose to set a certain ODT file as a dialog box's default theme.

NOTE: Origin typically saves ODT files in the C:/​Program Files/​OriginLab/​Origin<version>/​Themes/​Dialog directory.

How to open an ODT file

Origin ODT files are not meant to be opened by users. To select a theme for an Origin dialog box, open that dialog box in Origin and then select the triangle button that appears to the right of the Dialog Theme field.

Programs that open ODT files

Windows

OOMMF Data Table

Developer National Institute of Standards and Technology
Popularity
3.0  |  20 Votes
 

An ODT file may also be a data file created by OOMMF (Object Oriented Micromagnetic Framework), a micromagnetics analysis package developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It contains one or more tables of micromagnetics data saved as ASCII plain text. ODT files usually also contain tags and comments that describe the data they contain.

More Information

Screenshot of a .odt file in Apple TextEdit
ODT file open in Apple TextEdit

OOMMF is a public domain micromagnetics package that allows physicists to solve micromagnetics problems. When a physicist solves a micromagnetics problem, OOMMF produces an ODT file that contains tabular text data. Each table includes:

  • The solver iteration count
  • Nominal applied field
  • Reduced average magnetization
  • Total energy

Each ODT file begins with the line # ODT 1.0, to identify it as an ODT file. In addition to tabular data, ODT files may also contain the following tags:

  • Table Start: Used to segment a file containing multiple data tables
  • Title: Used to specify a table's title
  • Units: Used to specify data's units of measurement
  • Table End: Paired with a corresponding Table Start tag

ODT files may also contain comments, preceded by ##.

How to open an ODT file

You can open an ODT file in OOMMF (multiplatform). Doing so will visually display the data the file contains. You can also open an ODT file in any text editor, to view the data it contains as plain text.

Programs that open ODT files

Windows
Mac
Linux

Verified by FileInfo.com

The FileInfo.com team has independently researched all file formats and software programs listed on this page. Our goal is 100% accuracy and we only publish information about file types that we have verified.

If you would like to suggest any additions or updates to this page, please let us know.