You received a file in an unknown format from a friend of yours and you are wondering what ods file is and how to open ODS files? There is no shame, you are not the only one; the ODS format is a relatively new and unknown format to many. In fact, as you will see shortly, you most likely already have all the tools you need to open ODS files; what i will do in this little article is give you a little help by explaining what ods file is and how to open it.
Index
- What is ODS
- Open ODS files
- Open ODS with OpenOffice
- Open ODS files with Excel
- Opening ODS files with LibreOffice
What is ODS
First let’s try to understand what ods file is; very simple in reality, it is a spreadsheet created with OpenOffice and more particularly with the Calc application of OpenOffice. In practice it is the equivalent of the xls file of excel.
OpenOffice is a very popular free office alternative; is a suite available for both windows and Linux that allows you to manage all Office documents.
Open ODS files
Now that you know what ods file is, you will surely understand that it is trivially a spreadsheet; for this reason you have several possibilities to open it.
Open ODS with OpenOffice
Since, as I told you, the ODS format is the native format of the OpenOffice Calc application, the first solution I propose is to use OpenOffice directly.
You can download OpenOffice for free from the official website by clicking on the Download button or even choose to use the portable version that can be downloaded from this address which does not require any installation and can be performed directly from a USB stick but is much slower. Once OpenOffice is installed, just double click on the ODS file to open it.
Open ODS files with Excel
If you have Office installed on your computer then you can open ODS files simply by double clicking on the file; it will automatically open with Excel. Once opened, you can convert it to the classic excel format by selecting the Save As item and choosing the excel xlsd format at the bottom.
If you do not have Office installed and you do not want to buy it, you can open ODS files with Office Online, the completely free version of Office that does not require any installation and is used from a normal browser and does not require any installation. Find all the information about Office Online in this guide.
Opening ODS files with LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a completely free suite very similar to OpenOffice that allows you to view ODS files from the Calc application. LibreOffice is available for both windows and Linux. and you can download it from the home page by clicking on the green button that says download now .
