.ODS File Format – Styles

style:style

A style (16.2) has these attributes:

Its children are the formatting-property elements for its family: style:table-properties, style:table-column-properties, style:table-row-properties, style:table-cell-properties, style:paragraph-properties and style:text-properties (the text in a cell), plus graphic, chart, drawing-page, section and ruby properties for other families, and any number of style:map conditions.

How a property’s value is found

A property is looked up in the style applied to the element, then in its parent style, its grandparent and so on (16.2). For a table cell, if that finds nothing, the search goes on in the style named by table:default-cell-style-name on the cell’s row, and then in the one named by the same attribute on the cell’s column. A paragraph inside a cell falls back to the cell’s style. After that the default style of the family applies, then the default the standard defines for the property, and failing that the application chooses.

style:default-style

One per family, in office:styles (16.4), with only style:family and the same property children as a style. It holds the defaults for every style of that family.

Conditional styles: style:map

Cell styles and data styles can hold style:map elements (16.3), each a condition that, when true, swaps in another style. Attributes: style:condition, style:apply-style-name (a common style of the same kind and family; naming an automatic or missing style is an error) and style:base-cell-address (an absolute address with sheet name, the cell that relative references in the condition are measured from) (19.466, 19.468, 19.472). A condition may start with a namespace prefix and a colon; without one, the OpenFormula namespace urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:of:1.2 applies. An unrecognised condition makes the map be ignored.

In cell conditions a value is a decimal number, a string in double quotes (a quote inside written twice), or an expression in the condition’s formula language. Paragraph styles have their own conditions (footnote(), endnote(), header(), footer(), list-level()=n, outline-level()=n, section(), table(), table-header()), which do not concern cells.

style:table-properties

Formatting of a whole table, that is a sheet (17.15). Child: style:background-image.

style:table-column-properties

style:table-row-properties

Child: style:background-image.

style:table-cell-properties

Formatting of cells (17.18). Child: style:background-image. The horizontal alignment of cell text is not here but in the style’s style:paragraph-properties (fo:text-align), used when style:text-align-source is fix.

style:text-properties

The character formatting of a cell’s text, also allowed inside data styles (16.29.29). Its attributes are the general text properties of OpenDocument (20.x): fo:font-family, style:font-name (a declared font face), fo:font-size, fo:font-weight, fo:font-style, fo:font-variant, fo:color, fo:background-color, fo:text-transform, fo:text-shadow, fo:letter-spacing, fo:language, fo:country, fo:script, fo:hyphenate and its two character counts; the style:text-underline-…, style:text-overline-… and style:text-line-through-… groups (type, style, width, colour, mode, and text for line-through); style:text-position (super- and subscript), style:text-rotation-angle and -scale, style:text-scale, style:text-outline, style:font-relief, style:text-emphasize, style:text-combine with its start and end characters, style:text-blinking, style:letter-kerning, style:font-pitch, style:font-charset, style:font-family-generic, style:font-style-name, style:font-size-rel, style:script-type, style:use-window-font-color, the RFC 5646 language tags, and -asian and -complex variants of the font, size, weight, style, language, country and script attributes for East Asian and complex scripts; plus text:display and text:condition.

Data styles

A data style says how a value is shown, like a number format in other spreadsheets (16.29). It is referenced from a cell style’s style:data-style-name. There are seven kinds; each is a sequence of the parts below, with fixed text in number:text between them (never two number:text in a row), at most one number:fill-character, optional style:text-properties and any number of style:map conditions with value().

Attributes of the data style elements

Number parts

Date and time parts

With number:format-source="fixed", number:style means (19.362):

number:calendar (19.341): gregorian (switching from the Julian calendar after 4 October 1582), gengou (Japanese imperial eras), ROC (Minguo, Gregorian year − 1911), buddhist (Gregorian year + 543), hanja and its old alias hanja_yoil (Korean), hijri, jewish, or another name; absent means the locale’s default.

Example

A hand-written pair: a date style that shows 2026-11-12 as 12/11/2026, and a cell style using it with a bold font, a thin border and a yellow fill:

<number:date-style style:name="N37">
  <number:day number:style="long"/><number:text>/</number:text>
  <number:month number:style="long"/><number:text>/</number:text>
  <number:year number:style="long"/>
</number:date-style>
<style:style style:name="ce1" style:family="table-cell"
             style:parent-style-name="Default" style:data-style-name="N37">
  <style:table-cell-properties fo:background-color="#ffff00"
      fo:border="0.06pt solid #000000" style:vertical-align="middle"/>
  <style:text-properties fo:font-weight="bold"/>
</style:style>

A cell <table:table-cell table:style-name="ce1" office:value-type="date" office:date-value="2026-11-12"> then shows 12/11/2026 in bold on yellow.

Sources

• OpenDocument 1.3 Part 3: OpenDocument Schema – OASIS standard, sections 16 (styles, data styles), 17 (formatting property elements), 18.3 (data types), 19 and 20 (attributes)