ODT File

ODT file extension is used by files which store documents in Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF). Files in ODT format are designed to hold complex text document information.

ODF standard is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard which makes ODT files easy to understand, modify and create. Each entity in the ODT standard is encoded using XML tags with or without parameters.

ODT file is an archive which uses ZIP to compress multiple XML files inside it. These XML files contain actual content of the document in ODF format. Typical ODT file contains following XML documents:

content.xml – actual content of the document with formatting information
meta.xml – ODT file metadata (author, language, modification time, etc.)
settings.xml – Settings specific to the application rendering the document (zoom, cursor position)
styles.xml – Contains reusable styles. One style could be referred from multiple places of the document
manifest.xml – lists all files in the ODT archive.
pictures (directory) – stores images attached to the ODT document

Open Document Format is open source and free of legal obligations (it means that companies which hold patents pertaining to Open Document Format will not sue developers who use the format).

Following file types are based on Open Document Format:

Word processing files use ODT and FODT file extensions
Spreadsheet files use ODS and FODS file extensions
Graphics files use ODG and FODG file extensions
Presentation files use ODP and FODP file extensions
Formulas could be stored in ODF files

Many word processing applications support import and export to and from ODT files and several word processing applications use this format as their default storage format.

Following software packages are able to open ODT files: