File extension

.ods

OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)

.ods files are OpenDocument Spreadsheet files: the OASIS/ISO standard XML-in-ZIP format used by LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice for spreadsheets.

Known meanings

Formats and reference material for .ods

OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)

ZIP-packaged XML spreadsheet format from the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard (OASIS / ISO/IEC 26300)

  • spreadsheets
  • OASIS
Open link

Details

Format notes

OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)

The .ods extension is the spreadsheet member of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an open XML-based office format family developed by OASIS and also published as ISO/IEC

  1. ODF is the native format of LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice and is supported by many other office suites, so .ods is a vendor-neutral way to store and exchange spreadsheets.

An ODF file is a ZIP package. By convention the first entry is an uncompressed file named mimetype containing the media type (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet for .ods), which lets tools identify the file without parsing the XML. The package also holds content.xml (the document body), styles.xml, meta.xml (metadata), settings.xml, a META-INF/manifest.xml listing all parts, and embedded media. Sheets, rows, cells, values, and formulas are stored in content.xml; formulas follow the OpenFormula specification.

Tooling And Interoperability

LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, Calligra, and many libraries read and write ODF, and several other applications (including Microsoft Office and Google Workspace) import and export it with varying fidelity. Complex formatting, macros, and application-specific features may not round-trip exactly between suites.

Preservation And Security Notes

Because it is an open, standardized, and documented format, ODF is widely recommended for long-term storage of editable documents; keep a PDF/A rendition if fixed layout matters. Documents can contain macros, scripts, and links to external resources, so untrusted files should be opened with macros disabled. When extracting the ZIP container, guard against decompression bombs and path traversal.

Further Reading

  • OpenDocument v1.2 specification (OASIS): https://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/OpenDocument-v1.2.html
  • OpenDocument v1.3, Part 1 Introduction: https://docs.oasis-open.org/office/OpenDocument/v1.3/OpenDocument-v1.3-part1-introduction.html