I saw that exporting plain lists with specified starting numbers (‘[@20]') wasn't working—the lists just start over.
I was a bit frustrated with this, so I went looking at the code and the ODF schema. I found that ODF supports the text:start-value attribute[1] that could be used where needed. I came up with the following hack: diff -ub ox-odt.el\~ ox-odt.el --- ox-odt.el~ 2018-10-17 16:47:32.859161792 -0400 +++ ox-odt.el 2018-10-17 21:04:46.391759435 -0400 @@ -1966,10 +1966,13 @@ CONTENTS holds the contents of the item. INFO is a plist holding contextual information." (let* ((plain-list (org-export-get-parent item)) + (count (org-element-property :counter item)) (type (org-element-property :type plain-list))) (unless (memq type '(ordered unordered descriptive-1 descriptive-2)) (error "Unknown list type: %S" type)) - (format "\n<text:list-item>\n%s\n%s" + (format (concat "\n<text:list-item" + (when count (concat " text:start-value=\"" count "\"")) + ">\n%s\n%s") contents (if (org-element-map item 'table #'identity info 'first-match) "</text:list-header>" Diff finished. Wed Oct 17 21:17:59 2018 Emacs : GNU Emacs 27.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.11, cairo version 1.14.8) of 2018-10-17 Package: Org mode version 9.1.14 (9.1.14-7-g01c419-elpaplus @ …/org-plus-contrib-20181015/) Footnotes: [1] http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/cs01/OpenDocument-v1.2-cs01-part1.html#a_19_868_3__text_list-item_