Two more volumes of LO 7.0 user guides were published in January: Getting Started Guide and Impress Guide. They are available in free PDF downloads and in low-cost print editions. See this page for links.
Mar 02 2021
LibreOffice 7.0 Getting Started and Impress Guides
Mar 02 2021
LibreOffice 7.1 Community released
On 3 February, The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 7.1 Community, the volunteer-supported version of the office suite. The Community label emphasises the fact that the software is not targeted at enterprises, and not optimised for their support needs. Blog post with more information.
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF has strongly recommended the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners—for desktop, mobile and cloud—with long-term support options, professional assistance, custom features and other benefits. See LibreOffice in business.
Nov 21 2020
Help for people still using Apache OpenOffice
Do you know someone who is still using Apache OpenOffice? Have they recently tried to open a .odt, .ods or .odp file and received this error message? “This document was created by a newer version of OpenOffice. It may contain features not supported by your current version.”
The notice (pictured) that pops up in Apache OpenOffice doesn’t say so, but even the latest version of AOO (4.1.8, which was released earlier this month) does NOT support features like ODF 1.3, so updating to it won’t help. AOO users would need to “update” to LibreOffice. (LibreOffice users can avoid the problem for OO users by continuing to save files in ODF 1.2.)
Note: other features are lacking in AOO, for example the ability to save files in DOCX format, even though AOO can open DOCX files. LibreOffice can do both. Wouldn’t it be nice (helpful) if the “Update Now” button in AOO took a user to the LO download page?
See also this blog post at LibreOffice.
Nov 21 2020
LibreOffice 6.4 and 7.0 User Guides
I am way behind updating this blog, including mentioning the LibreOffice 6.4 user guides that have been published in 2020. These include Getting Started Guide, Writer Guide, Base Guide, Calc Guide, Draw Guide, and Math Guide.
Two volumes of the v7.x series of books have been published recently: Math Guide and Calc Guide.
You can download free PDFs of these books or buy printed copies of the v6.4 volumes (v7.0 print copies may be available later). See this page for links.
Nov 21 2020
LibreOffice 7.0
LibreOffice 7.0 was announced on 5 August 2020. Since then three minor releases have appeared. Significant new features include support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; better performance; and improved compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. For details, see the blog post linked above.
LibreOffice produced a visual timeline of derivatives from OpenOffice.org, as shown below. (Click for a larger image.)
Dec 28 2019
LibreOffice 6.2 Calc Guide published
It’s been a long time coming, but an updated version of the LibreOffice Calc Guide has finally been completed by the Documentation Team.
Free PDFs are here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#LibreOffice_Calc_Guide and will be linked from the main LibreOffice website in the new year.
A printed copy can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/libreoffice-62-calc-guide/26019667
Oct 18 2019
Self-publishing using LibreOffice Writer 6
UPDATE 2022: This book is no longer available. I have removed the links to files and print edition.
My new book, Self-publishing using LibreOffice Writer 6, is now available in paperback or PDF.
Aug 25 2019
LibreOffice 6.2.6 released
On August 14, 2019 The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice 6.2.6, the sixth minor release of the LibreOffice 6.2 family, targeted at users in production environments. All users of LibreOffice 6.1.x and LibreOffice 6.2.x versions should upgrade immediately for enhanced security, as the software includes both security fixes and some months of back-ported fixes. See their blog post.
(LibreOffice 6.2 and 6.3 are concurrent releases. LibreOffice 6.3 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. V6.2 is for users in production environments.)
Aug 11 2019
LibreOffice 6.3 released
On 8 August 2019, The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 6.3, a feature-rich major release with better performance, a large number of new and improved features, and enhanced interoperability with proprietary document format:
- Writer and Calc performance has been improved by an order of magnitude based on documents provided by end users: text files with different bookmarks, tables and embedded fonts, large ODS/XLSX spreadsheets, and Calc files with VLOOKUP load and render more quickly. Saving Calc spreadsheets as XLS files is also faster.
- The Tabbed Compact version of the NotebookBar user interface, introduced in LibreOffice 6.2, is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw. It leaves more space for user documents, spreadsheets and presentations on laptops with wide screens. In addition, the new Contextual Single UI is ready for Writer and Draw.
- In Calc, a new drop-down widget in the formula bar replaces the old Sum tool, giving the user quick access to the most frequently used functions. Also, a new FOURIER function has been added, to compute the discrete Fourier transform of an input array.
- Export as PDF has been improved with the support for the standard PDF/A-2 document format, which is required by several organizations for long term file storage. In addition, the design of editable PDF forms has been simplified with the addition of the Form menu to Writer, to further improve one of LibreOffice strongest features.
- Documents can now be redacted to remove or hide sensitive information such as personal data before exporting or sharing the file, to help companies or organisations to comply with regulations.
- On Windows, a proper console mode was added, with better output and error codes. This makes it easier to use LibreOffice to perform batch operations such as printing or converting many documents.
- Interoperability with Microsoft Office proprietary file formats has been improved in several areas with export support for DOTX document templates and XLTX spreadsheet templates, import of charts from DOCX drawingML group shapes, import/export of SmartArt from PPTX files, to preserve editing capabilities in PowerPoint, and better XLSX Pivot table interoperability.
More information, including screenshots, is available on the TDF blog.
Sep 19 2018
LibreOffice 6.0 Getting Started Guide published
In September 2018 Friends of OpenDocument published the printed edition of the LibreOffice 6.0 Getting Started Guide, written by the LibreOffice Documentation Team. Free PDFs and ODTs are available from the LibreOffice website. Purchase printed copies from our store at Lulu.com.