Batch Processing ODT Files to DOCX Using Python

In today’s digital office environment, document format compatibility can be a constant source of frustration. While many of us are accustomed to working with Microsoft Word’s DOCX format, we often receive ODT (Open Document Text) files from users of LibreOffice or OpenOffice. When there are only a few files, manual conversion may be acceptable. But when you’re faced with a large number of ODT documents that all need to be unified into DOCX format, inefficiency and repetitive work quickly become major pain points.

Fortunately, Python—as a powerful scripting language—gives us the ability to automate this kind of task. This article takes a deep dive into how to use the Spire.Doc for Python library to efficiently and accurately batch convert ODT files to DOCX, freeing you from tedious and repetitive manual work.

ODT vs. DOCX: Format Barriers and the Need for Conversion

Let’s start with a brief review of these two mainstream document formats:

• ODT (Open Document Text): An XML-based open standard document format maintained by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). It is widely used in open-source office suites such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Its strengths lie in openness, interoperability, and free usage.
• DOCX (Office Open XML): The default document format used by Microsoft Word since version 2007. It is also XML-based and offers a powerful feature set with broad market adoption.

Although both formats are XML-based, they differ in internal structure, feature support, and rendering behavior. As a result, directly opening or converting between them can sometimes lead to layout issues, lost styles, or even incomplete content. For cross-platform or cross-software collaboration, converting ODT documents to DOCX to ensure optimal compatibility and display quality has become a practical requirement for many professionals.

Getting Started with Spire.Doc for Python: Installation and Basic Conversion

To achieve efficient ODT-to-DOCX conversion, we’ll use the powerful Spire.Doc for Python document processing library. Designed specifically for Python developers, it provides a rich and stable API for creating, editing, converting, and printing Word documents, with support for converting between multiple document formats.

Installing Spire.Doc for Python

Installation is straightforward—just use pip:

pip install Spire.Doc

Single-File Conversion Example

Once installed, let’s start with a simple example that converts a single ODT file to DOCX. Suppose we have an ODT file named sample.odt and want to convert it to sample.docx.

from spire.doc import *

def convert_odt_to_docx(input_path: str, output_path: str):
    """
    Convert a single ODT file to a DOCX file.
    :param input_path: Full path to the ODT file.
    :param output_path: Full path for the output DOCX file.
    """
    try:
        # Create a Document object
        document = Document()
        # Load the ODT file
        document.LoadFromFile(input_path)
        # Save the document as DOCX
        document.SaveToFile(output_path, FileFormat.Docx)
        document.Close()
        print(f"Successfully converted: '{input_path}' -> '{output_path}'")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Conversion failed: '{input_path}', error: {e}")

# Example usage
input_odt_file = "sample.odt"   # Make sure this file exists in the same directory
output_docx_file = "sample.docx"

convert_odt_to_docx(input_odt_file, output_docx_file)

The core of this code lies in two lines:
document.LoadFromFile(input_path) and document.SaveToFile(output_path, FileFormat.Docx).
LoadFromFile reads the document from the specified path, while SaveToFile saves it in the target format. The FileFormat.Docx constant explicitly specifies DOCX as the output format.

Batch Processing: Automate Your Document Workflow with Python

Single-file conversion is just the beginning. Our real goal is batch processing. Below is a more complete script that traverses all ODT files in a specified folder and converts them to DOCX, saving the results in another folder.

import os
from spire.doc import *

def batch_convert_odt_to_docx(input_folder: str, output_folder: str):
    """
    Batch convert all ODT files in a given folder to DOCX format.
    :param input_folder: Path to the folder containing ODT files.
    :param output_folder: Path to the folder for saving converted DOCX files.
    """
    if not os.path.exists(input_folder):
        print(f"Error: Input folder '{input_folder}' does not exist.")
        return

    if not os.path.exists(output_folder):
        os.makedirs(output_folder)
        print(f"Created output folder: '{output_folder}'")

    print(f"Starting batch conversion from '{input_folder}' to '{output_folder}'...")

    converted_count = 0
    failed_count = 0

    for filename in os.listdir(input_folder):
        if filename.lower().endswith(".odt"):
            input_file_path = os.path.join(input_folder, filename)
            output_filename = os.path.splitext(filename)[0] + ".docx"
            output_file_path = os.path.join(output_folder, output_filename)

            try:
                document = Document()
                document.LoadFromFile(input_file_path)
                document.SaveToFile(output_file_path, FileFormat.Docx)
                document.Close()
                print(f"  Converted successfully: '{filename}' -> '{output_filename}'")
                converted_count += 1
            except Exception as e:
                print(f"  Conversion failed: '{filename}', error: {e}")
                failed_count += 1

    print("\n--- Batch Conversion Summary ---")
    print(f"Total ODT files processed: {converted_count + failed_count}")
    print(f"Successfully converted: {converted_count}")
    print(f"Failed conversions: {failed_count}")
    print("Batch conversion completed.")


# Configure input and output directories
input_dir = "input_odt_files"    # Folder containing ODT files
output_dir = "output_docx_files" # Folder for converted DOCX files

# Run batch conversion
batch_convert_odt_to_docx(input_dir, output_dir)

Code walkthrough:

1. Import required modules: os for filesystem operations, and spire.doc for document processing.
2. batch_convert_odt_to_docx function:

• Accepts input_folder and output_folder as parameters.
• Folder checks and creation: Verifies that the input folder exists. If the output folder does not exist, it is created automatically.
• File traversal: Uses os.listdir(input_folder) to retrieve all files in the input directory.
• ODT filtering: Selects files ending in .odt (case-insensitive).
• Path construction: Uses os.path.join() to safely build file paths across operating systems.
• Output filename generation: Uses os.path.splitext(filename)[0] to keep the original name and replace the extension with .docx.
• Error handling: Wraps each conversion in a try...except block so that a single failure does not interrupt the entire batch process.
• Progress and statistics: Prints the status of each file and provides a summary of successes and failures at the end.

To run this script:

1. Create an input_odt_files folder in the same directory as the script.
2. Place all your ODT documents into that folder.
3. Run the Python script. The converted DOCX files will appear in the output_docx_files folder.

Optimization and Robustness: Making Your Batch Script More Reliable

To make the batch conversion script more robust and user-friendly in real-world scenarios, consider the following enhancements:

• Logging: Replace simple print statements with Python’s logging module to record detailed information, warnings, and errors to log files—especially useful when processing large numbers of files.
• Command-line arguments: Use the argparse module to accept input and output folder paths from the command line, rather than hardcoding them into the script.
• Recursive folder processing: The current script processes only one directory level. If your ODT files are spread across subfolders, use os.walk instead of os.listdir to traverse directories recursively.
• Concurrent processing (advanced): For extremely large file sets, consider using multiprocessing or concurrent.futures to enable parallel processing and further improve performance. Be sure to account for the thread-safety of Spire.Doc for Python.

Conclusion

Through this guide, we’ve seen how Python and the Spire.Doc for Python library provide a powerful and flexible solution for batch converting ODT files to DOCX. From understanding format differences to building efficient automation scripts, we not only solved a practical problem but also demonstrated Python’s immense potential in office automation. Automation is a cornerstone of modern workflows—and mastering these skills allows you to invest your time and energy in more creative and valuable work.