Why is Microsoft Word complaining about Libre Office's .odt files being corrupt?

15,875

Solution 1

Microsoft office 2010 does not support ODF 1.2 format, which LibreOffice does. If you change the ODF format used in LibreOffice to 1.0/1.1 you will no longer have this problem.

Solution 2

In my experience, MS Word 2010 does, in fact, open .odt files, even though it gives two error messages first. If I send people an .odt document, I just ask them to ignore the error messages.

Or at least Word 2010 running on Windows 7 does so. The Apple version of Word seems to have further problems.

If sending an .odt document, I do offer to send it in another format (such as .docx) if required. But it helps make people aware of the Open Document format. A link to http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument/ can help.

Solution 3

This seems to be a problem with MS Word and not Libre Office. For now, I guess I'll have to stick with .doc, .docx, or .html.

15,875

Vreality

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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Vreality over 1 year

Whenever I give someone a .odt file created with LibreOffice and they open it with Microsoft Word, it says that the file is corrupt. Is there a CRLF problem or are the .odt files MS Word makes and the .odt files LibreOffice makes different altogether?

I'm trying to promote using .odt files (there's an xkcd comic on this :P) but it seems as though Microsoft doesn't want that to happen. Is there a way to make sure that my .odt files will not appear corrupt to Microsoft Word?
- gertvdijk about 11 years
  
  I'm pretty sure that LibreOffice produces more standard ODF files than Microsoft's software. Are you sure you've saved and transferred the file correctly? Verify the hash (MD5/SHA) on both ends to be sure. Anyway, is it this what you're talking about?
- Mateo about 11 years
  
  askubuntu.com/questions/51412/…
- Vreality about 11 years
  
  @gertvdijk The file is transferred correctly; yes that's it.
- Vreality about 11 years
  
  @mateo_salta That's not what I'm talking about.
- Mateo about 11 years
  
  just a workaround suggestion...
- gertvdijk about 11 years
  
  What LibreOffice version are you using? If it's 3.6 and you're sending ODF files to users of Office 2010 this seems not to be compatible. LO 3.6 uses ODF format 1.2 for which you need a newer Office version.
Vreality about 11 years

Well, you can save a file as .odt in MS Word so I don't see why they wouldn't support opening it.
gertvdijk about 11 years

This answer is just not true.
Vreality about 11 years

@gertvdijk Thank you. I was having trouble finding a source. :)
Mateo about 11 years

I have 2008 on mac and it doesn't open .odt, yet i found this article saying you could for 2007 office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/…
Vreality about 11 years

@pgrytdal A) Yes, but I would prefer to use .odt if possible. B) Yes, but then I'm still using MS's format (and I guess I have to until they update it.) I may use html but people might complain if it opens in IE by default and not Word...
pgrytdal about 11 years

@Vreality I am guessing it will be a very long time (if ever) before MS decides to allow opening of non-proprietary formats on MS Word. I would suggest when sending the file, say in the email... or whatever way you are sending it, that they will have to use Libre Office... it is avalible at (provide the link) and it's free! I have gotten a few people to switch.
Vreality over 10 years

That makes more sense now (in an odd, M$ sort of way).
Wilf almost 10 years

I found the settings in Libreoffice 4.2 for this in Options under 'Load/Save', in the 'Default file format and ODF settings'