Converting Word to ODT format

28 Aug 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.