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Teamwork with LibreOffice

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Teamwork with LibreOffice

The perennial question about LibreOffice Writer from Ask: https://ask.libreoffice.org/ Working in a team with different programs and file formats: "I have LibreOffice and my company uses MS Office. Is the process docx-odt-docx-odt-etc.?" First of all, this is not recommended.

The following explanations are intended to illustrate why it is not advisable to use different file formats within a team.

When several people in a team work, there is naturally a desire to edit and send documents together. With LibreOffice, you should always save files in the native Open Document Format (ODF).

For LibreOffice, these are:

  • Writer word processing – ODT
  • Calc spreadsheet – ODS
  • Impress presentations – ODP
  • Draw drawings – ODG
  • Base databases – ODB
  • Math formula editor – ODF (here the “F” at the end stands for formula)

If a team member insists on using a foreign format, such as DOCX, make a copy of your ODT file in DOCX to send it and always keep your ODT file.

You can read about why compatibility issues or conversion problems may arise here in the FAQ:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/General/118

Hinweis:
When working with LibreOffice, whether in a team or alone, always save in ODF format. For external formats, only create copies of your ODF file.

Opening and saving in LibreOffice

This section illustrates what happens when you open a foreign format in LibreOffice and then save it again later. The conversion shown also takes place even if you do not make any changes to the document.

So when you open a foreign format in LibreOffice and save it again, the document undergoes two conversions.

Opening and saving in MS Office

This section illustrates what happens when you open an ODF format file from LibreOffice in MS Office and then save it again later. The conversion shown also takes place even if you do not make any changes to the document.

Even in Microsoft Office, a document is likely to undergo two conversions when it is opened and saved. Ultimately, Microsoft Office is a black box. As you can see, in this graphic, the designation "ODT / ODS / etc." is displayed in green when opening and in blue when saving. This is not an error but intentional, because the ODF file types are different.

Why is ODF not always ODF?

The differences are explained in the following two blogs:
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/06/28/a-technical-dive-into-odf/
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/07/18/artificially-complex-xml-schema-as-lock-in-tool/

The entire series on ODF and XML can be found here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/BlogODF