What opens an .odt file?

LibreOffice and OpenOffice open it natively. Word has read and written ODF for years, and Google Docs imports it. On Linux it is usually the default document format.

Why pick ODT over DOCX?

ODT is an open standard maintained by a standards body rather than a single vendor, which matters for archiving and for public-sector work where an open format is required.

Does formatting survive when I paste from a website?

Yes. Headings, bold and italic, lists, tables and links all come across as themselves. What gets dropped is the site's own styling — its fonts, colours, classes and scripts — which the document formats could not carry anyway, and which is where pasted content usually goes wrong.

How much text can I paste?

Up to 25 MB, which is far more than any realistic document — roughly four million words. The editor shows the size as you type and tells you before you hit the limit.

Does my text get uploaded?

No. The document is built by JavaScript running in this tab, and nothing is sent anywhere. You can test that by disconnecting from the internet before you press convert — it still works.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no limit on how many documents you make, and no watermark on the output.

DocumentLayout rebuiltRuns in your browser

Text to ODT

Paste or type text and get an .odt file — the OpenDocument format LibreOffice and OpenOffice use natively, and an open standard rather than any one company's format.

On your deviceNever uploadedGone when you close the tabHow this works

DocumentName

0 words0 B

You will get

OpenDocument Text

document.odt

On your deviceNever uploadedGone when you close the tabHow this works

How to use it

1
Type or paste your text
Paste from anywhere and the formatting comes with it.
2
Format it however you like
Headings, bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, bullet and numbered lists, quotes, code blocks, tables and links — applied straight to the text on screen. There is no markup to learn and no preview to switch to: what you are looking at is the document.
3
Create the ODT
Press Create ODT and the file downloads, ready to open and edit.

When this is the right tool

When the recipient works in LibreOffice or OpenOffice, or when an open format is a requirement rather than a preference — a condition attached to a lot of public-sector and archival work.

ODT keeps heading styles as styles, so the document has a real outline you can navigate and restyle, the same as .docx.

What the formatting actually does

Each control marks up real structure, and the converter carries that into the ODT document. A heading becomes a heading in the file's outline, not just larger text; a bullet list becomes a real list; a table becomes a table with cells.

That matters more than it sounds. Structure is what lets a screen reader announce your headings, a PDF reader build a navigation pane, and Word show an outline you can collapse. Text that has merely been made bigger and bolder has none of that.

Headings: Three levels, which is as deep as most documents need. They become the document's outline.
Lists: Bulleted and numbered. Numbered lists renumber themselves as you add and remove items.
Emphasis: Bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, applied to whatever you have selected.
Blocks: Quotes, fenced code blocks, tables and horizontal rules, all rendered as their real equivalents.

What it will not do

There is no control for typeface, text size or colour on individual words, and that is deliberate rather than unfinished. Those would be per-word styling, and the honest position is that a button which silently does nothing is worse than one that is not there.

Document-level choices — page size and the typeface for the whole document — are in the settings panel beside the editor, because they apply to the finished file rather than to a selection.

Images cannot be placed from the editor. Everything here is text you typed or pasted, which is also why nothing has to be uploaded.

About these formats

Accepts

HyperText Markup Language

The markup language of the web.

Extensions: .html, .htm, .xhtml
MIME type: text/html
Best for: Web pages · Email templates · Rich exports
Compatibility: Every browser.

Write or paste plain text or Markdown — Markdown headings, lists, bold and links are rendered. Nothing is uploaded; the document is built in your browser.

Good to know