The .ODT word processor documents produced by LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are in fact ZIP archives consisting of XML files, other files, and directories. It is actually straightforward to crack open the archive and get at the files and directories within. This can be helpful for fixing bugs, or just for exploring. I recently had cause to do just that. Here is how to open up .ODT documents, and then turn those files and directories back into a document file.

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