Free online WMA to ODT converter

A WMA recording must be transcribed before it can become an editable ODT document. This is useful when a speech, interview, lecture, or meeting recording needs to be edited, shared, or archived as searchable text in LibreOffice Writer.

What the WMA format is

WMA (Windows Media Audio) is a compressed audio format developed by Microsoft. Windows Media Player and older Windows recording applications commonly create or play WMA files; voice recorders, archived interviews, and downloaded audio may also use the extension. A WMA file contains sound, not document text, so changing its filename extension cannot produce a usable ODT file.

What the ODT format is

ODT (OpenDocument Text) is an editable word-processing format used by LibreOffice Writer, Apache OpenOffice, and other OpenDocument-compatible programs. It stores paragraphs, headings, tables, styles, and other document structure in an open standard, making it suitable for editing, searching, sharing, and long-term archiving.

How to actually convert WMA to ODT

The conversion has two stages: speech recognition creates a transcript, then the transcript is saved as ODT.

Use the online converter

1. Open the WMA-to-ODT converter on 101convert.com; the service can be used for free without installing software.
2. Upload the .wma file and select the source language if the converter provides a language option.
3. Start the conversion and wait for speech recognition to produce the transcript.
4. Download the resulting .odt file and open it in LibreOffice Writer or another compatible word processor.
5. Review names, punctuation, numbers, speaker changes, and specialized terminology before sharing the document.

Use desktop tools

1. Convert WMA to a broadly supported audio file with FFmpeg if the transcription program cannot read WMA: ffmpeg -i recording.wma -ar 16000 -ac 1 recording.wav.
2. Transcribe the resulting WAV with a speech-recognition application such as Whisper. For a local Whisper installation, a typical command is whisper recording.wav --language en --task transcribe --output_format txt; replace en with the recording language.
3. Open the generated .txt transcript in LibreOffice Writer, correct the formatting, and choose File → Save As.
4. Select ODF Text Document (.odt), assign a filename, and save.

Quality and limitations

ODT conversion does not improve audio or transcription accuracy. Recognition quality depends on WMA bitrate, background noise, microphone quality, overlapping speakers, accents, pronunciation, and the selected language model. The resulting document normally contains plain transcript text; timestamps, speaker labels, paragraphs, and headings may need manual correction. Converting WMA to WAV changes the audio container and may increase file size, but it does not restore information removed by lossy WMA compression.