Many schools, colleges and universities around the world use LibreOffice to get their work done every day. The free and open source office suite, compatible with Microsoft Office and a successor to OpenOffice(.org) with many extra features, includes a complete set of powerful tools for students and teachers:
- Writer – word processor
- Calc – spreadsheet
- Impress – presentation tool
- Draw – for technical drawings, brochures etc.
- Math – formula editor
- Base – database
Benefits in education
Because LibreOffice is free and open source software, students and teachers can download and install it on as many machines as they like, without worrying about license fees, subscriptions or audits. If you’re a teacher, you can be sure that your students won’t suddenly be locked out of their documents for not renewing a subscription. They can keep working, as long as they like!
As well as the desktop app, there’s also LibreOffice Online, a cloud-based version of the suite that students can access via their web browsers. You can set up LibreOffice Online on your own infrastructure, with help from professional support services.
Additionally, LibreOffice is backed up by a rich ecosystem, with many companies and resources available to help users:
- Tutorials for teachers
- Official handbooks and guides
- Templates for use in education
- Professional support
- Community assistance on Ask LibreOffice
- Global and local mailing lists
One more benefit, especially for IT students and teachers: because LibreOffice is open source, anyone can study how it works and make improvements. See what you can do for LibreOffice here!
Unfortunately, still forced to use MS Word due to poor (paradoxically) support of zotero in LibreOffice .
Please show Zotero some love, so we in Academia can make the switch to the amazing LO Writer!
E.g.
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121945
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121958
Hi Georgios, we do all we can, but please remember that we’re a volunteer-driven, community open source project with limited resources. If you want better Zotero support, please give us a hand – get involved: http://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/ – Or consider funding a certified developer: https://www.documentfoundation.org/gethelp/developers/ – That way, you get the features you want, and everyone benefits! Thanks 🙂
I have used LibreOffice for years. I used it in my teaching. My husband donated to it. Now suddenly I cant use it when I need to copy a online email to keep. I hope I can continue to use it as I am 83 years old & lost my vision in my right eye this last year & now that we are secluded in our home becausee of the virus this is a difficult time to loose the use of it.
Hi Eulimma, glad to hear you like LibreOffice, and we really appreciate your husband’s donation! If you need help with the software, please check out the community assistance website: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/ – There you can post questions and get answers from other users. Thanks again!
Is there any kind of document that shows in depth the compatibility with the various Microsoft formats (dox, docx, xls, xlsx etc)