Free online MSG to ODT converter

Convert an Outlook MSG file to ODT when you need to edit or share an email in a word processor such as LibreOffice Writer. ODT keeps the message body in an editable document rather than an email-specific file.

What MSG is

MSG is Microsoft Outlook’s email-message format. Outlook creates MSG files when a user saves an individual email; they can contain message text, sender and recipient details, dates, formatting, and attachments. You may encounter them as email exports or as files shared outside Outlook.

What ODT is

ODT is the OpenDocument Text format, used for editable word-processing documents. LibreOffice Writer and Apache OpenOffice can open and save ODT files, and many other office programs can read the format. It is useful when recipients need to edit or review the message body as a document.

How to convert MSG to ODT

Online on 101convert.com

1. Open the MSG-to-ODT converter page on 101convert.com and upload the MSG file. You can add several files for batch conversion.
2. Start the conversion to ODT.
3. Download the converted file or files. Check the page for its per-file size limit.

Offline with desktop software

Free option: Python libraries. This method extracts the message body and writes it to an ODT document. Install Python, then run python -m pip install extract-msg odfpy. Save the following as convert_msg.py in the same folder as message.msg, then run python convert_msg.py:

import extract_msg
from odf.opendocument import OpenDocumentText
from odf.text import H, P

msg = extract_msg.Message("message.msg")
doc = OpenDocumentText()

if msg.subject:
    doc.text.addElement(H(outlinelevel=1, text=msg.subject))
for label, value in (("From", msg.sender), ("Date", msg.date)):
    if value:
        doc.text.addElement(P(text=f"{label}: {value}"))
for line in (msg.body or "").splitlines():
    doc.text.addElement(P(text=line))

doc.save("message.odt")

This creates message.odt in the same folder. The script does not add attachments.

Microsoft Outlook and LibreOffice Writer. In classic Outlook for Windows, open the MSG file and choose File → Save As; save it as HTML. Open that HTML file in LibreOffice Writer, then choose File → Save As and select ODT as the file type. This uses Outlook to read the MSG and Writer to create the ODT.

Quality and limitations

ODT stores document content, not the full email structure. Formatting can change during conversion, and recipient fields, message headers, and attachments may not carry over as document content. Save attachments separately; check the converted document against the original when those details matter.