Converting Word to ODT format

29 Nov 20242 minutes to read

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is an open file format for office documents originally developed for Open Office suite by Sun Microsystems. OpenDocument Text (ODT) is the file format for Word processing documents and currently for an OASIS and ISO standard.

Assemblies and NuGet packages required

Refer to the following links for assemblies and NuGet packages required based on platforms to convert a Word document to ODT file using the .NET Word Library (DocIO).

The Essential® DocIO supports converting the Word document into ODT file. The following code example shows how to convert the Word document into ODT file.

NOTE

Refer to the appropriate tabs in the code snippets section: C# [Cross-platform] for ASP.NET Core, Blazor, Xamarin, UWP, .NET MAUI, and WinUI; C# [Windows-specific] for WinForms and WPF; VB.NET [Windows-specific] for VB.NET applications.

FileStream fileStreamPath = new FileStream("Template.docx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite);
//Opens an existing document from file system through constructor of WordDocument class
using (WordDocument document = new WordDocument(fileStreamPath, FormatType.Docx))
{
    //Saves the Word document to MemoryStream
    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
    document.Save(stream, FormatType.Odt);
    //Closes the Word document
    document.Close();
}
//Loads the existing Word document
WordDocument document = new WordDocument("Template.docx");
//Saves the document as ODT file
document.Save("WordToODT.odt", FormatType.Odt);
//Closes the document
document.Close();
'Loads the existing Word document 
Dim document As New WordDocument("Template.docx")
'Saves the document as ODT file
document.Save("WordToODT.odt", FormatType.Odt)
'Closes the document
document.Close()

You can download a complete working sample from GitHub.

Supported Document elements

Document Element Attribute Support Status Notes
Bookmark

 Id

 Yes

 -







Border


 Color

 Yes

 -
Distance from text

 No

 -
Line style

 Yes

 -
Line width

 Yes

 -
Document Properties

No

 -
Field

Partial

 For some of the fields, the field results have been preserved as span text.
Footnotes and Endnotes

No

 -
Form Field

No

 -
Header / Footer

 Different per section

 Yes

 -


Hyperlink


 External URL

 Yes

 -
Local

 Yes

 -


Image


 Inline

 Yes

 -
Scale

 Yes

 -









List





 Custom bullets

 No

 -
Multi-level

 Yes

 -
Numbered

 Yes

 -
Restart numbering

 No

 -
Standard bullets

 Yes

 -
Comment

No

Symbols

Yes

Paragraph

 Alignment

 Yes



Borders

 Yes

 See Borders, for more details.


Keep lines and paragraphs together

 Yes

 -


Paragraph Indents

 Yes

 -


Line spacing

 Yes

 -


Page break before

 No

 -


Shading

 No



Spacing before and after

 Yes

 -
Shading

 Background color

 Yes


Foreground color

 No
Styles

 Paragraph styles

 Yes

 -


Character styles

 Yes

 -


List styles

 Yes

 -
Table

 Alignment

 Yes

 -


Cell margins

 Yes

 -


Column widths

 Yes

 -


Indent from left

 No

 -


Preferred width

 No

 -


Spacing between cells

 Yes

 -


Borders

 Yes

 See Borders, for more details.


Shading

 No

Nested Table

Yes

Table Cell

 Borders

 Yes

 See Borders, for more details.


Cell margins

 Yes

 -


Horizontal merge

 No

 -


Shading

 No



Vertical alignment

 Yes

 -


Vertical merge

 No

 -
Table Row

 Height

 Yes

 -


Padding

 Yes

 -
Text

 All caps

 Yes

 -


Bold

 Yes

 -


Character spacing

 Yes

 -


Color

 Yes

 -


Emboss

 Yes

 Rendered as bold.


Engrave

 No



Font

 Yes

 -


Hidden

 No

 -


Highlighting

 Yes

 -


Italic

 Yes

 -


Line breaks

 Yes

 -


Outline

 Yes

 Rendered as bold.


Page breaks

 Yes

 -


Shading

 No



Small caps

 Yes

 -


Special symbols

 Yes

 -


Strike out

 Yes

 -


Subscript / Superscript

 Yes

 -


Underline

 Yes

Online Demo

  • Explore how to convert the Word document to ODT using the .NET Word Library (DocIO) in a live demo here.