How to convert all odt files in a folder into microsoft word files

One method is to use CUPS and the PDF psuedo-printer to "print" the text to a PDF file.

Another is to use enscript to encode to postscript and then convert from postscript to PDF using the ps2pdf file from ghostscript package.

That is unlikely going to work, as the suggestion in the comment is both incomplete (you cannot just specify some directory) and incorrect (--env:... should be -env:... Here is what I recommend you do:

1. Stop all instances of libreoffice

2. Start libreoffice from the commandline without specifying --headless:

   libreoffice -env:UserInstallation=file:///home/username/.config/libreoffice-alt
   

   you should replace /home/username with your home directory (and adjust .config if you don't have that on your CentOS, I did this on Ubuntu and Linux Mint). The above will create a new configuration directory for the alternate libreoffice in your .config directory, without which you would get some error about java not being found.

3. Exit that instance of libreoffice
4. That directory /home/username/.config/libreoffice-alt should now have been created for you.

Now start another libreoffice from the command-line (doing so allows you to see some useful messages if things go wrong when starting the second instance), without the -env:..., and while that is still running start the conversion using:

libreoffice -env:UserInstallation=file:///home/username/.config/libreoffice-alt --headless --convert-to pdf *.odt