Can Word open a .odt file?

Anonymous
2013-02-28T21:04:45+00:00

I'm using Office for Mac 2008, version 12.3.5.  I've received a .odt (Open Office) file on an email but cannot open it.  I did get a message that the file may be corrupt or contain unreadable elements.  Is there anything I can download to read it assuming that it just hasn't been recognised or should Word read it & therefore it must be corrupt?

Thanks

Janet

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Jim G 134.1K Reputation points MVP
    2013-10-08T15:15:09+00:00

    Yes it does.

    It is my understanding that Office 2011 for Mac, Office 2010 with service pack 2 or later, the Office web applications at docs.com and skydrive.com, and Office 2013 adhere to the "strict" standard. I do not know whether or not LibreOffice, pages, or TextEdit adhere to the "strict" standard.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-10-07T18:48:12+00:00

    MS Office 2011 only has write support for ISO/IEC 29500 "transitional". The standard would be

    ISO/IEC 29500 "strict"...

    Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization\_of\_Office\_Open\_XMLcovers the debate pretty well...

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  3. Jim G 134.1K Reputation points MVP
    2013-10-07T15:23:02+00:00

    I'm sorry, Stephen, but the facts are: "The [OOXML] format was initially standardised by Ecma (as ECMA-376) and, in later versions, by ISO and IEC (as ISO/IEC 29500)."

    - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OOXML

    Since this question was first posed, LibreOffice version 4 has been released. This newer version of LibreOffice has better support for OOXML than version 3, but LibreOffice still doesn't default to the standard OOXML open standard and hangs onto the obsolete ODF format for reliability purposes. Converting core OpenOffice code to work with the new file standard is a gargantuan task that has yet to be implmented by open source advocates. On the plus side, retaining the old code base gives LibreOffice the ability to open files that were saved in file formats Microsoft has abandonded and save them in the up to date OOXML file format.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-10-07T13:04:40+00:00

    I cannot agree to this comment.

    ODF is a well-documented, ISO certified, open format. OOXML is *not*. For example OOXML allows the embedding of proprietary binaries (which is of course heavily used by MS products).

    There have been many debates about how OOXML could have become an ISO standard at all...

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