File extension

.odt

OpenDocument Text (.odt)

.odt files are OpenDocument Text files: the OASIS/ISO standard XML-in-ZIP format used by LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice for word-processing documents.

Known meanings

Formats and reference material for .odt

OpenDocument Text (.odt)

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

  • documents
  • OASIS
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Details

Format notes

OpenDocument Text (.odt)

The .odt extension is the word-processing 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 .odt is a vendor-neutral way to store and exchange word-processing documents.

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.text for .odt), 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. The text content is in content.xml as paragraphs, headings, lists, and tables.

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