In 4.1.7 (but also in 4.0.6 and maybe earlier 4.x versions) it is impossible to export the comments in "OpenDocument Text" format regardless of the state of the "Display comments" checkbox.
The problem seems to be that ExportOdtClass.php sets the "odt_comments" option to force inclusion of comments in output, however export.php only checks for "_include_comments", like this:
$do_comments = isset($GLOBALS[$what . '_include_comments']);
For me, I solved it this way:
$do_comments = isset($GLOBALS[$what . '_include_comments']) || isset($GLOBALS[$what . '_comments']);
The same problem may also occur for latex output, which also set the "latex_comments" setting rather than "latex_include_comments".
Fixed with https://github.com/phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin/commit/ff064833ec46523c04b91aced2def15a63bef354