i’ve switched from wordpad to libreoffice writer and am saving files in the .odt format. in explorer, there is an .rtf file AND a .odt file with the same file name. is it safe to delete the .rtf version? is it recommended to delete the .rtf version or is it recommended to keep the rtf. version.
thx
and in general …
You get an .odt file because it is not the same format as .rtf.
The .odt is a conversion of your .rtf. As a converted file, it is not (and never will be) an exact duplicate of the original file due to the differences in format encoding (and the semantics below it).
If you are confident you will no longer ever need to check your original file against your present copy, you can delete the older .rtf.
I however suggest you thoroughly check the consistency of the converted document beforehand.
Be also aware that the converted document is not a “Writer-native” document. Writer formatting is based on named styles. Writer can’t guess what italic stands for: is it an emphasis, a foreign word, a definition, …? Therefore it can’t assign relevant styles to paragraphs, words, pages, … Conversion operates with direct formatting or with single-use single-occurrence styles (which is not better).
If you intend to maintain, edit, augment your documents in the future, you should seriously consider learning how to format them “Writer-way” and style them such. A starting point is the Writer Guide.