Convert ODS to XLSX

Two zipped-XML formats that nearly agree

ODS and XLSX are structurally similar — both are ZIP archives of XML describing sheets, cells, styles and relationships — which is why so much comes across untouched. Values, number formats, fonts, colours, borders, merged cells, column widths, frozen panes, conditional formatting, data validation, comments, charts and images all have a direct equivalent in both, and hidden sheets stay hidden.

Formulas are where the two genuinely differ, and the difference is in the names rather than the mathematics. Both store a formula as text; each spelled its functions to suit its own application. The conversion writes them under their Excel names, so the overwhelming majority — everything in the common statistical, financial, text and lookup sets — simply works. The exceptions are functions that exist only in LibreOffice, which have nothing to become: Excel shows #NAME? in those cells, which is honest rather than broken, and tells you exactly which cells need attention.

References behave the same way, with one thing worth checking on a large workbook. Cross-sheet and cross-file references are rewritten into Excel's syntax, and a link to another file only resolves if that file is where the reference says it is — so a set of linked workbooks should be converted together and kept in the same folder, or the links break on the first recalculation.

Macros do not come across, and they could not. LibreOffice Basic and VBA are different languages calling different object models, so there is no translation to perform — and the .xlsx format cannot hold macros at all, by design, which is why Excel has a separate .xlsm for them. A macro-driven spreadsheet needs its automation rewritten rather than converted. If our server is unreachable, the page says so and converts locally, which keeps values, formulas, number formats, merged cells and column widths while dropping fonts, colours and charts.

When you want something else

Installing LibreOffice gives you the same conversion with nothing crossing the network and no size limit: soffice --headless --convert-to xlsx *.ods handles an entire folder in one command. For financial models and anything you would rather not send anywhere, that is the right answer.

Before converting at all, it is worth knowing that Excel has opened .ods files directly since 2010. If the recipient simply needs to read the data, sending the original may work without any conversion and without the formula-name risk entirely. Convert when the file has to be edited in Excel long-term, not merely opened once.