OpenDocument Spreadsheet

File Format
Name	OpenDocument Spreadsheet
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Document Spreadsheet OpenDocument Spreadsheet
Extension(s)	.ods, .fods, .ots
MIME Type(s)	application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet-template
LoCFDD	fdd000438, fdd000439
PRONOM	fmt/137, fmt/294, fmt/295
Released	2005-05-01

The OpenDocument Spreadsheet format is one of a number of types of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (commonly referred to as OpenDocument), an XML-based file format defined by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) in 2005.

OpenDocument Spreadsheets can, like all OpenDocument files, be represented in one of two fashions - as a single XML document or as a collection of several sub-documents within a single package (commonly a ZIP archive). Generally, the extension .fods is used for the uncommonly-used single XML documents and .ods for packaged sub-documents.

As of v1.2 of the OpenDocument specification, the format contains information regarding spreadsheet formulae, pivot tables, etc. in the OpenFormula format.

Information

• OpenDocument v1.0 specification
• OpenDocument v1.1 specification
• OpenDocument v1.2 specification
• Wikipedia - OpenDocument

Variants

There are variants of the OpenDocument Spreadsheet format created by different software applications. Such files need to be treated differently and identified separately from standard OpenDocument Spreadsheet files

Rob Weir has done some work in identifying and documenting these differences. See the following for more information:

• ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability: Theory and Practice
• Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability
• A follow-up on Excel 2007 SP2′s ODF support

Doug Mahugh's response to Rob's posts may also contain some useful information:

• ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability

Finally, Office.com has some information on the difference between their Office Open XML Spreadsheet format and OpenDocument Spreadsheet.

• Office.com - Differences between the OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) format and the Excel (.xlsx) format

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2

When creating ODS spreadsheet files "vanilla" Microsoft Excel 2007 SP2 places spreadsheet formulae in the Excel namespace. The namespace it uses is different to that used by other applications such as OpenOffice.org use and is not the ODF 1.2 namespace nor the OOXML namespace. Applications that check the namespace will not read ODS files created with MS Excel 2007 SP2 when they include this feature or, if they are able to render the files at all, they will not be able to interpret the formulae correctly. This can cause such files to be displayed with corruption by other spreadsheet programs.

Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 also seems to have some issues adhering to the OpenDocument standard. See the following link for more information;

• Depth of Knowledge: ODF 1.2 Support in Microsoft Office

Links

• Versioning of OpenOffice/LibreOffice Documents Using Git
• ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability (Microsoft discussion)