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Ask in a chat and Oda builds the file for you: a Word document, an Excel workbook or a PowerPoint presentation, saved as ., . or .. The rules it writes by, and the check it can run on the finished file, come from the Office skills that ship with Oda.
office-docx, office-pptx or office-xlsx (Bundled skills). A skill is a folder with a SKILL. file (Skill files and discovery).Oda builds reports, letters and formatted tables in Word; slide decks with text, tables, images and charts in PowerPoint; and workbooks with cell values, formulas and formatting in Excel.
Name the file, or mention it with @, and say what to change. Unless you ask for an edit in place, Oda saves its changes as a new file, so your original stays as it was. Oda keeps the files it makes in your workspace, together with any scripts and working files it uses for the task.
Oda can check a finished file before you open it. Ask in the chat, for example Check that the report contains the payment terms or Check that the presentation has 12 slides.
The check is read-only: it reads the file's structure, never changes the file and never renders it. It covers the modern formats only, ., . and ., and reports these checks:
| Check | What it confirms |
|---|---|
package | The file is a readable Office package, and its parts and relationships are present. |
contains | The text you asked it to find is in the file (--contains TEXT). |
count | The number of slides or sheets, when you ask for a count (--count N). |
output | The check's report was saved. |
Text checks read the main part of the document, plus the headers, footers, footnotes and endnotes it links to. In a Word file, text in comments, in a glossary or in unreferenced parts does not count; in a presentation, only the slides are searched, not speaker notes.
pass when every check passed and fail when one did not. Individual checks can report skipped.formulas_evaluated: False records that formula results were not calculated.A wrong request is refused with a message that names the rule behind it:
input must be .: only the modern formats are read, and a rename does not convert a file.--count must be non-negative and applies only to slides or sheets: counting does not apply to Word documents.--out must differ from the input document: the report is never written over the file it checks.The check is structural, so it does not judge pagination, clipped text, fonts, chart appearance or the values a formula will produce: it does not evaluate formulas. Oda writes a formula, but nothing calculates it until the workbook is opened in Excel, so a formula cell can look empty or stale in another tool until then.
A passing check says the structure and the text are in order. Open the file to see how it looks.
Document work runs on a runtime that Oda prepares and manages on your computer: its own copy of Python 3.9 or later, with the libraries the Office skills need. Nothing is installed into your own setup, and the runtime never changes PATH.
The first document task prepares the runtime, and the chat shows a step called Load workspace dependencies; later tasks reuse it. The check itself uses only the Python standard library.
primary runtime: incompatible platform or architecture when the copy does not fit this computer.The details are in Workspace dependencies.
You do not need an office suite installed for Oda to build a file; you need one only if you want to open the finished file there.
Oda builds and edits the modern formats: ., . and .. Old, encrypted and macro-enabled files need their own workflow, and renaming a file does not convert it. If a file you have is in an old format, save or export it as one of the modern formats first.
Yes. Get the numbers into the chat first, then ask for the file. Oda reaches company data through the Minds of your DataMind OS (Company data, documents and reports).
Yes. Describe the layout in your request: headings and sections, a table's columns, the order of the slides, the names of the sheets. Oda builds to your description with the guidance of the bundled skill for the format, and you can refine the result in a follow-up.
Yes, as the file's own chart. For example, a slide can carry a chart, and the workbook the chart's numbers come from stays part of the file. Charts and KPI rows that Oda shows in the chat stay in the chat.
Oda builds and edits the modern formats: ., . and .. Old, encrypted and macro-enabled files need their own workflow, and renaming a file does not convert it.
Not unless you ask it to. Oda saves its changes as a new file and leaves the original as it was; ask for an edit in place when you want the same file updated.
Tell Oda what to change in the chat, the way you would ask for anything else. Oda edits the file and can check the result again.
Yes. Ask for it again whenever you need it, or set up a scheduled task whose prompt builds the file on the schedule you choose (Schedule recurring tasks).
No. The report records formulas_evaluated: False. A formula cell can look empty or stale in another tool until the workbook is opened and recalculated in Excel.
No. Counting applies to slides or sheets only, and a request to count a Word file is refused with --count must be non-negative and applies only to slides or sheets.
Text checks read the main part of the document, plus the headers, footers and notes it links to. Text in comments, in a glossary or in unreferenced parts of a Word file does not count, and in a presentation only the slides are searched. Put the text in the document body or on a slide and check again.
Close it first, or ask Oda to save a new copy. Excel locks an open workbook, so a save over the open file can fail.
Oda keeps serving the previous complete copy for one more task and retries on the next. If the copy cannot be used at all, Oda reports the reason instead of working around it.