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Benefits of saving in open formats

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

  • 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 products are set by default to save in Microsoft Word (.DOC), Excel (.XLS) or PowerPoint (.PPT) formatformats.

It But this can be set up to changed so that they 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

by default.

Set Word documents to save as open documents (.odt)

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

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In the Options menu, please select Save.

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

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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.

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Set

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Excel spreadsheets to save in the open format (.ods)

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

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In the Options menu, please select Save.

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

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Excel will now save in ODS format automatically.

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

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Learn more

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Resources

Microsoft guidance on how to save a PowerPoint in OpenDocument Presentation (.odp) format

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