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. Anonymous
    2013-10-09T20:29:11+00:00

    Yes, Office 2013 is at last able to write "strict" Files. Office 2010 and 2011 (which is the latest version for Mac) are not - and yet the support for ODF was removed in these versions!

    The only reason for this is - once again - that MS is trying to push it's own standards... Or can you think of any other motive to remove support for an ISO-approved, open, and actively developed standard, while still maintaining support for much older, proprietary formats?

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  2. 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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  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
    2013-03-03T17:54:53+00:00

    Many thanks for the detailed reply.  I'll pass on the advice so that my friend can make the file readable.  Oddly she usually uses Word 2010 with Windows 7, so I can't imagine where this file originated or how she managed to read it herself.

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