Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi, I am wondering if the odf extension is an Open Office file of some sort and if so what sould be able to open it. Do you need Open Office or Star Office to open or are the compatible with MSFT Office?

You have to be very specific as to what you're referring to. "ODF" (all capitals) is the initials for the Open Document Format, which is the name of overall file format technology used by the collection of OpenOffice.org (OOo) applications. So, "ODF" includes several different types of files, all of which share some features in common, but each type of file is normally labeled by a distinct file name suffix, or "extension".

Among the file types (or extensions) you might find as "ODF" files are: .odt (ODF Text Document), .ods (ODF Spreadsheet), and yes, there is a .odf also, which is an ODF Formula Document: a mathematical formula.

However, it's fairly unusual for ODF formula files to be found "in the wild"; they're normally embedded inside another document.

If you have an actual ODF Formula file, OOo will open it. MS Office cannot open any ODF file, at least not without a special add-on.

As OOo is free, you can install it to open an ODF file.
If you really want it into MS Office, there are add-ons for that, but result is not so good IIRC.

NB: moved the thread from Extensions (it means add-ons in OOo) to Setup forum.

Thanks for the information, actually it is an odt and now I know exactly what that is. However I don't think I am going to download and install a whole new office suite just to open this one file. Thanks for all your time.

If you just want to read a document someone sent you, you can use one of the online web suites; most of them, including Google Docs, will open ODF text documents and spreadsheets.

Ok thanks for the tip.