Extracting images from a Word document: don’t use Word! Use OpenOffice.org!

First published on December 23, 2006

When you have images embedded in Word documents, the easiest way to extract them is to save the document as an HTML file; Word then dumps the images into a sub-folder.

However, if you are using an open source word processor such as OpenOffice.org Writer, files saved in OpenDocument format (.odt extension) exist in some weird cross between a .zip file and an XML file. To extract images from an .odt file, rename the file with the extension .zip. Open this .zip file and you should be able to extract your images. Then you can just rename the file back to the .odt extension and continue working as if nothing happened.

So there’s another reason to consider an open source office suite. Not only is it free, but there are some cool format advantages.

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This entry is filed under Computer Stuff and written by Peter Keung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.