Simple clear advice in plain English

PC help: Launch OpenOffice documents in Microsoft Office

Download a plug-in to view .ods and .odt files with Office 2003, 2000 and XP

Q I recently moved to a new PC because the old one stopped working, but have several files I cannot open.

The file extensions are .ods and .odt. Windows says it cannot find any software to open them with if I double-click on them.

David Thorne

A The two file types in question were created by OpenOffice. The .odt file is from the word processor Writer and the .ods file from the spreadsheet Calc. You should download and install OpenOffice on the new computer to access them.

If the new computer has Microsoft Office 2003, 2000 or XP installed, it is possible to download a plug-in that allows it to open and edit OpenOffice documents. Sadly, the plug-in doesn’t work with Office 2007.

For more information about this software, see Sun's website.

Reader Comments

ods and odt files

These are ODF files In addition to using OpenOffice, you can also open (but not edit) these files with your Firefox web browser just as if they were PDF files. Firefox used to have a plugin called odfreader which reads these files, but I think the reader has been incorporated into Firefox now.

Posted by Bob Scanlon, 10 Apr 2008

   

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