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Benefits of saving in open formats

Saving documents as open formats (for example, ODT or ODS) ensures:

• documents can be accessed easily by all users 
• there is no need to go back and 'fix' the document to make it accessible at a later date
• only one version of the document is required

Setting open formats as the default option in Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office doesn't have to save in Microsoft Word (.DOC), Excel (.XLS) or PowerPoint (.PPT) format.

It can be set up to save in open formats the first time around.

This saves you the extra step of converting documents to that format.

Set this up in Word

Click File to bring up the menu, and then select Options at the bottom of the panel

In the Options menu, please select Save

Then where it says Save files in that format, please select OpenDocument Text (odt)

Word will now save in ODT format automatically.

If you want to save a document in Word format (.DOC) in the future, you will need to select Save As Type... and then choose Word Document as the format

Set this up in Excel

Click File to bring up the menu, and then select Options at the bottom of the panel

In the Options menu, please select Save

Then where it says Save files in that format, please select OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ods)

Excel will now save in ODS automatically

If you want to save a document in Word format (.DOC) in the future, you will need to select Save As Type... and then choose Excel Document as the format