How can I open a ".odt" ?
Q: Paul, How can I open a “.odt” ?
A: As I discussed in this article, Cannot open attachment…help!, when you run across a file that Windows does not recognize, and doesn’t know how to open, it is due to the fact that some program was used to create the file that you don’t have.
In this case that program was OpenWriter– the word processor in the free OpenOffice Suite.
Basically, when this happens, you have three options:
* Ask your sender to resend the file, only this time ‘Save As’ it to a more common file type. (such as .doc, or .rtf, or even .txt)
* Install the program on your machine yourself.
* Look for “viewer”, or “converter” tool.
I like the first choice myself (and I’m not always so polite in my phrasing), but most of you will probably prefer the third. (This comes up at least once a week for PowerPoint slideshows!)
A free document viewer for all common word processing formats can be found here.
A free file type converter (all types of ‘media’) can be found here.
.. and for the 600,000th time.. the PowerPoint Viewer is here.
[note: when you come across a ‘dot xyz‘ that you’ve never heard of before and have no idea what might of created it.. go to FILExt.com. There you will be able to look it up.]
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
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Tech - for Everyone 
[…] ckgni wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptQ: Paul, How can I open a “.odt” ? A: As I discussed in this article, Cannot open attachment…help!, when you run across a file that Windows does not recognize, and doesn’t know how to open, it is due to the fact that some program was used to create the file that you don’t have. In this case that program was OpenWriter– the word processor in the free OpenOffice Suite. Basically, when this happens, you have three options:* Ask your sender to resend the file, only this time ‘Save As’ it to a more common file type. (such as .doc, or .rtf, or even .txt)* Install the program on your machine yourself.* Look for “viewer”, or “converter” tool. I like the first choice myself (and I’m not always so polite in my phrasing), but most of you will probably prefer the third. (This comes up at least once […] […]
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Pingback by How can I open a ".odt" ? | November 10, 2008 |
You should have seen me furiously googling (I consider myself a master googler ;)) for a MS Publisher viewer when I desperately needed some information hosted in a Publisher file by the local grade school. No such beast exists.
Finally convinced the secretary to print it to a PDF file and host that file since I was sure no one that would want to view the file (pretty much all the parents) would actually have the software to open a Publisher file.
Of course, everybody needs the PowerPoint Viewer so they can watch all the junk email slide shows. Duh.
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Gadzooks64–
You are absolutely correct inre the Publisher ‘viewer’.. and from my research I have concluded that Publisher was such a abysmal failure (sales) that the conclusion is that not enough people use it to make creating a viewer worth the effort.
Therefore it is incumbent upon Publisher users to Save their document as either a .pdf or .mdi (which probably means they will have to install a converter, like CutePDF) if they want to share it with others..
Kind of ironic, but true.
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