The ODP file (.odp, .fodp)

The basics

What is an ODP file?

Anatomy

What's inside an ODP file

An ODP file is a ZIP archive. Unlike PPTX, which stores each slide as a separate file, an ODP keeps every slide, with its notes and transition, in one content.xml. This is the structure of sample-presentation.odp from the samples below, with its third slide.

$ unzip -l sample-presentation.odp
  Length  Name
      47  mimetype
       0  Configurations2/…   (9 empty folders)
   54712  styles.xml
   28830  content.xml
   67624  Pictures/1000000000000640000003848FC75F26.png
    6074  settings.xml
    1555  meta.xml
   13029  Thumbnails/thumbnail.png
    1092  META-INF/manifest.xml

First bytes: 50 4B 03 04 … "mimetype" "application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation"

content.xml, slide 3:
<draw:page draw:name="page3" draw:style-name="dp3" draw:master-page-name="Default"
    presentation:presentation-page-layout-name="AL3T19">
  <draw:frame presentation:class="title" svg:x="1.4cm" svg:y="0.628cm" …>
    <draw:text-box><text:p>A picture inside the package</text:p></draw:text-box>
  </draw:frame>
  <draw:frame draw:name="Package diagram" svg:width="19.2cm" svg:height="10.8cm" …>
    <draw:image xlink:href="Pictures/1000000000000640000003848FC75F26.png"
        draw:mime-type="image/png"/>
    <svg:title>Diagram of an ODP package</svg:title>
    <svg:desc>The files inside an ODP: mimetype first, …</svg:desc>
  </draw:frame>
  <anim:par presentation:node-type="timing-root">
    <anim:par smil:begin="id3.begin">
      <anim:transitionFilter smil:dur="0.8s" smil:type="fade" smil:subtype="crossfade"/>
    </anim:par>
  </anim:par>
  <presentation:notes>
    <draw:page-thumbnail draw:page-number="3" presentation:class="page" …/>
    <draw:frame presentation:class="notes" …>
      <draw:text-box><text:p>This 1600 x 900 PNG was drawn with code. …</text:p></draw:text-box>
    </draw:frame>
  </presentation:notes>
</draw:page>

1. 1mimetype

   The mimetype file

   First in the archive and uncompressed, as the standard requires, so the MIME type always sits at byte 38. That's how a program tells an ODP from an ODS or any other ZIP without unzipping it.

2. 2styles.xml

   Masters and layouts

   The master pages (style:master-page) with their background and placeholders, the slide size, and the presentation layouts that say where a slide's title and content go.

3. 3content.xml

   The slides

   Every slide as a draw:page, in order. Reordering slides moves these elements; there are no per-slide files or relationship files as in PPTX.

4. 4Pictures/1000…F26.png

   Pictures

   Images are stored once, in their own format, under names LibreOffice generates. Unzip the file to get them back at full size.

5. 5draw:master-page-name="Default"

   The master page

   Each slide names the master it's built on. A deck can have several masters; the layout name (AL3T19, Title Only) records which placeholders the slide was made with.

6. 6presentation:class="title" svg:x="1.4cm"

   A placeholder

   A frame that fills a role from the layout: title, subtitle, outline (bullets), notes. Positions and sizes are in ordinary units such as cm or in, not PowerPoint's EMUs.

7. 7<draw:image xlink:href="Pictures/…">

   A picture

   The slide points to the image inside the package. svg:title and svg:desc hold its alternative text for screen readers.

8. 8<anim:transitionFilter smil:type="fade" …/>

   The transition

   Transitions and animations use SMIL, the W3C animation vocabulary: here a crossfade lasting 0.8 seconds. The transition type is also recorded in the slide's style, dp3.

9. 9<presentation:notes>

   Speaker notes

   Stored inside the slide they belong to, with a thumbnail of the slide and a text frame, the layout of a printed notes page.

Under the hood

The parts of an ODP package

Variants

ODF versions, flat ODP and templates

Comparison

ODP vs PPTX, and what changes when you convert

Troubleshooting

Common ODP problems and how to fix them

How to

How to open, edit and convert an ODP file

Security

Is it safe to open an ODP? And what does it reveal?

Free downloads

Sample ODP files to download

Free sample OpenDocument presentations for testing converters, previews, parsers and uploads. Each one opens in LibreOffice Impress and converts to PDF and PPTX; the packaged ones also load in odfpy.

What's inside sample-presentation.odp

Browsers can't preview ODP files, so download it and open it in LibreOffice Impress, PowerPoint or Google Slides. These are the parts to look for, and where they live in the package.

1. Four 16:9 slides on one master

   28 × 15.75 cm, Impress's default size. The master page sets the pale background, the blue bar and the text colours, in styles.xml.

2. Title slide

   Title and subtitle placeholders, moved to the middle of the slide, which Impress records as presentation:user-transformed="true".

3. Bullets with levels

   Slide 2: one text:list whose items have two indent levels; bullet characters come from the master's outline styles.

4. A picture drawn with code

   Slide 3: a 1600 × 900 PNG diagram of an ODP package, stored in Pictures/, with a title and description for screen readers.

5. A link

   Slide 4: a text field whose address, https://99helpers.com/file-types/odp, is in xlink:href.

6. Notes, transitions, slide numbers

   Speaker notes on every slide in presentation:notes, a 0.8-second crossfade on every slide, and slide numbers on slides 2 to 4.

7. Document properties

   Title, subject, description and keywords in meta.xml, shown in LibreOffice under File, Properties.

All sample ODP files

• Four-slide sample deck

  sample-presentation.odp · 90.5 KB (92,639 bytes)

  A 16:9 deck made in LibreOffice Impress: title slide, bullets, a picture drawn with code and a closing slide with a link, with speaker notes, fade transitions and slide numbers. ODF 1.3.

  • Testing converters, previews and thumbnails
  • Checking parsers against a typical deck
  Download

• Minimal ODP, four files

  sample-minimal.odp · 1.5 KB (1,507 bytes)

  Written by hand: mimetype, the manifest, a styles.xml with one master page, and a content.xml with one slide and one text frame. No metadata, settings or pictures.

  • Parser tests: don't assume optional files exist
  • Learning the package structure
  Download

• Flat XML version (.fodp)

  sample-presentation.fodp · 181.5 KB (185,820 bytes)

  The same deck as one XML file, with the PNG embedded as Base64 text in office:binary-data. Twice the size of the zipped version.

  • Testing readers that support flat ODF
  • Reading the whole format in a text editor
  DownloadOpen

• Converted from PPTX

  sample-from-pptx.odp · 168.4 KB (172,398 bytes)

  The seven-slide deck from our PPTX samples, converted by LibreOffice: a table, a chart as an embedded chart document, a JPEG picture, notes, a link and transitions, with 11 master pages made from PowerPoint's layouts.

  • Testing PPTX to ODP round trips
  • Checking how readers handle embedded chart objects
  Download

Ways to test with them

• File type detection: all three ODP files carry their MIME type at byte 38. A detector that reports application/zip isn't reading the mimetype file.
• Round trip: convert sample-presentation.odp to PPTX and back, and check the notes, the picture's alt text and the transitions survive.
• Thumbnails: a previewer should show the title slide from Thumbnails/thumbnail.png or render slide 1; compare it with what your app draws.
• Embedded objects: text extraction from sample-from-pptx.odp should include the chart's data, which lives in Object 1/content.xml, not in the main content.xml.
• Flat files: a reader that handles both should get the same four slides from sample-presentation.odp and sample-presentation.fodp.

Free to use for testing, teaching and demos, commercially or not, with no attribution needed. A link back to this page is always appreciated.

Questions

ODP files, frequently asked