ODT File Manager

Local ODT document creation and editing powered by odfdo.

Library: odfdo v3.20+ — actively maintained, single dep (lxml), full ODF support.

Required Setup

pip install odfdo

Skill Boundaries

This skill is purely local — it has no network access and knows nothing about NextCloud.

For NextCloud workflows, pair with nextcloud-aio-oc:

Scripts live at: ~/.openclaw/skills/odt-filemgr-oc/scripts/

Workflows

Edit an existing ODT (NextCloud)

NC=~/.openclaw/skills/nextcloud-aio-oc/scripts
ODT=~/.openclaw/skills/odt-filemgr-oc/scripts

# 1. Download
python3 $NC/files_binary.py download "/Documents/MyDoc.odt" /tmp/MyDoc.odt

# 2. Inspect
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py inspect /tmp/MyDoc.odt

# 3. Edit
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py append /tmp/MyDoc.odt --text "New Section" --heading 2
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py append /tmp/MyDoc.odt --text "Section content here."

# 4. Upload back
python3 $NC/files_binary.py upload /tmp/MyDoc.odt "/Documents/MyDoc.odt"

Create a new ODT and push to NextCloud

# 1. Create locally
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py create /tmp/NewDoc.odt --title "Q1 Report"

# 2. Add content
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py append /tmp/NewDoc.odt --text "Summary" --heading 2
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py append /tmp/NewDoc.odt --text "Results were positive across all metrics."

# 3. Push to NextCloud
python3 $NC/files_binary.py upload /tmp/NewDoc.odt "/Documents/Q1 Report.odt"

Edit a local ODT (no NextCloud)

python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py inspect   myfile.odt
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py to-text   myfile.odt
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py append    myfile.odt --text "Added paragraph."
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py replace   myfile.odt --find "draft" --sub "final"
python3 $ODT/odt_tool.py set-meta  myfile.odt --title "Final Report"

odt_tool.py Commands

Custom Python Edits

For table edits, style changes, or multi-step operations, write inline Python:

from odfdo import Document, Header, Paragraph

doc = Document("/tmp/file.odt")
body = doc.body

# Read all content in order
for child in body.children:
    if isinstance(child, Header):
        print(f"H{child.level}: {child.inner_text}")
    elif isinstance(child, Paragraph) and child.inner_text.strip():
        print(f"[{child.style}]: {child.inner_text}")

# Add content
body.append(Header(2, "New Section"))
body.append(Paragraph("Content here."))

# Table edit
table = body.get_table_by_name("MyTable")
table.set_value(0, 0, "Updated cell")

doc.save("/tmp/file.odt", pretty=True)

For the full odfdo API (tables, lists, spans, styles, metadata), see REFERENCE.md.

Key Rules

1. Always inspect before editing a file you haven't seen.
2. Temp files: use /tmp/ for working files; clean up after upload.
3. Styles: for complex style systems (colors, spacing, borders), use merge-styles with a template rather than generating styles from scratch. set-font and set-outline work safely on any document without a template.

Troubleshooting