How to convert an odt to pdf?

Question

Does anyone know how to convert an odt file (LibreOffice) to pdf?

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

Just open the document with libre office and choose Export as PDF...:

For a command line solution there is unoconv that converts files from the command line:

unoconv -f pdf mydocument.odt

Note: Only starting from Ubuntu 11.10 unoconv depends on Libre Office. Previous unoconv versions (from Ubuntu <= 11.04) depend on Open Office (but it will also run with Libre Office).

Answer 2

You can also use the command line of libreoffice for your purpose. That gives you the advantage of batch conversion. But single files are also possible. This example converts all odt-files in the current directory to pdf's:

libreoffice --headless --invisible --convert-to pdf *.odt

Get more information on command line options with:

man libreoffice

(Note: You have to close all running instances of libreoffice before the command line works)

Answer 3

Nautilus Script

This script utilizes libreoffice to convert files compatible with LibreOffice to PDF.

#!/bin/bash
## PDFconvert 0.1
## by MHC (http://askubuntu.com/users/81372/mhc)
## License: GPL 3.0
## depends on python, libreoffice
## Note: if you are using a non-default LO version (e.g. because you installed it 
## from a precompiled package instead of the official repos) you might have to change
## 'libreoffice' according to the version you're using, e.g. 'libreoffice3.6'

# Get work directory
base="`python -c 'import gio,sys; print(gio.File(sys.argv[1]).get_path())' $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI`"

#Convert documents
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
    document=$1
    libreoffice --headless --invisible --convert-to pdf --outdir "$base" "$document" 
    shift

done

For installation instructions see here: How do I install a nautilus script?

Answer 4

Note: I decided to delete my answer from this question and to post a modified version of it here when I realised that unoconv doesn't deal with psw files at all well, and doesn't convert them successfully to other formats. There may also be problems with docx and xlsx formats.

---

However, Libreoffice fully supports many file types; full documentation is available at the official site, which details the valid input and output formats.

You could use the command-line libreoffice convert utility or unoconv, which is available in the repositories. I find unoconv to be very useful, and it is probably what you want. Even though Takkat has briefly mentioned unoconv, I thought it would be useful to give some more details and a batch conversion one-liner.

Using the terminal you could cd to the directory containing your files and then batch convert all of them by running a one-liner like this:

for f in *.odt; do unoconv -f pdf "${f/%pdf/odt}"; done

(This one-liner is a modification of my translate script featured in this answer.)

If you later want to use any other file formats, just substitute the odt and pdf for any other supported input and output formats. You can find the supported formats for a file type by entering unoconv -f odt --show. To convert a single file use, for example, unoconv -f pdf myfile.odt.

Further information on and options for the program can be found by entering in terminal man unoconv or by going to the Ubuntu manpages online.

Answer 5

Consider using the docspal service (http://www.docspal.com). It is free, fast and supports lots of formats. Hope, it will be useful for you.

Answer 6

Another Nautilus Script

This very simple and lightweight Nautilus Script uses unoconv to convert selected file(s) compatible with LibreOffice to PDF format:

#!/bin/sh
#Nautilus Script to convert selected LibreOffice-compatible file(s) to PDF
#
OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS="
"
for filename in $@; do
unoconv --doctype=document --format=pdf "$filename"
done
IFS=$OLDIFS