Batch Converting OpenOffice.org Files

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Michael Schurter

There’s a handy utility called unoconv that lets you batch/mass convert OpenOffice.org files to any format OpenOffice supports such as PDF, Word DOC, or HTML.

Here’s how to use it in Linux:

wget http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/unoconv/unoconv-0.3.tar.bz2
tar xjf unoconv-0.3.tar.bz2
cd unoconv
./unoconv --listener &
echo $! > unoconv.pid
# To convert all ODT files in ~/Documents to Word DOC format:
./unoconv -f doc ~/Documents/School/*.odt
kill `cat unoconv.pid`
rm unoconv.pid

The two important commands are:

  • unoconv --listener –to start the listener
  • unoconv -f format path/to/odt/documents –to actually convert files
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  • AC

    Now find me a way to automatically generate OO documents from a template or something using my data and we may have a decent pdf generator.

  • Bene

    Openoffice writer files are zip files containing among others the XML files styles.xml and content.xml. You may substitute the content.xml files independently of the styles.xml files. Thus, you could generate the content.xml from your data with any XML transformation language (such as XSLT or XQuery), and then zip them together with the styles.xml file, and subsequently process them with unoconv to pdf files… Just a thought