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Desktop app

ODT to PDF converter

Coming to the PDFCheetah desktop app

Turn an OpenDocument text file into a PDF, in the PDFCheetah desktop app.

What it will do

ODT to PDF will open an OpenDocument text file (.odt) and save it as a PDF that looks the way the document looks in Word: the same fonts, line breaks, page breaks, tables and pictures.

An .odt file is OpenDocument Text, an open standard (ISO/IEC 26300) and the format LibreOffice Writer and Apache OpenOffice save by default. Word and Google Docs open it too, but a document with a complex layout can shift a little in a program other than the one that made it, so the program it was written in is usually the safest one to save it as a PDF from.

It will run in the PDFCheetah desktop app, on your own computer, with nothing uploaded.

Why it needs the desktop app

A Word document is not a set of pages. It is a description of one, and the program that opens it decides where each line breaks, where each page ends and how each table fits. Getting that right takes a full office layout engine.

The engine the desktop app will carry, LibreOffice, is far too large to download into a browser tab every time you open a page, and a converter that guesses at the layout instead gives you a PDF that does not match your document. The app installs it once and converts on your computer.

Save it as a PDF today

LibreOffice, Word and Google Docs all open an .odt file and save it as a PDF. Here is how, step by step.

  • Text to PDF. If the document is plain text, PDFCheetah turns a .txt file into a PDF in your browser today.

Microsoft Word

  1. Open the file in Word.
  2. Choose File, then Save As (Save a Copy in some versions).
  3. Set the file type, or File Format on a Mac, to PDF.
  4. Choose Save, or Export on a Mac.

Google Docs

  1. Upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Docs.
  2. Choose File, then Download, then PDF Document (.pdf).

This way uploads your file to Google Drive. The others on this page work on your own computer.

LibreOffice Writer (free, works offline)

  1. Open the file in LibreOffice Writer.
  2. Choose File, then Export As, then Export as PDF.
  3. Pick the pages and the image quality you want, then choose Export.

Any program that can print

  1. Open the file and choose Print.
  2. On Windows, pick Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer. On a Mac, open the PDF menu at the bottom of the print window and choose Save as PDF.
  3. Choose Print or Save, and pick where the PDF goes.

Printing to PDF keeps what is on the page, but links and the document's headings are usually lost.

Nothing on this page converts a file today. PDFCheetah's web tools turn text, Markdown, CSV and pictures into PDFs in your browser, but not Office documents.

The desktop app

The PDFCheetah desktop app is being built for Windows, macOS and Linux, to do the work a browser tab cannot, on your own computer. Its download page goes up when the app is published.

One email, when this tool is ready in the desktop app. No newsletter, and we do not pass it on.

Common questions

Is ODT to PDF free?
The ways to save a document as a PDF on this page are free today. In the desktop app, Office to PDF is planned as part of Pro, which has no price yet, so there is nothing to buy here.
Is my file uploaded?
No. Nothing on this page takes a file. The desktop app will convert on your own computer, the way every PDFCheetah tool works in your browser. Of the ways above, only Google's apps upload your file, to Google Drive.
When will it be ready?
There is no date yet. Leave your email above and we will send one message when it is ready in the desktop app.