Announcement of LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community
Berlin, 29 February 2024 – LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community, the first minor release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity in office environments, is now available at https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows, MacOS and Linux.
The release includes more than 100 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 24.2 [1] to improve the stability and robustness of the software. LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community is the most advanced version of the office suite, offering the best features and interoperability with Microsoft Office proprietary formats.
LibreOffice is the only office suite with a feature set comparable to the market leader. It also offers a range of interface options to suit all user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen form factors by optimising the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.
Highlights of LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community
The main advantage of LibreOffice over other office suites is the LibreOffice Technology engine, a single software platform for all environments: desktop, cloud and mobile. This allows LibreOffice to provide a better user experience and produce identical – and interoperable – documents based on both ISO standards: Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) for users concerned about compatibility, resilience and digital sovereignty, and the proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).
Most notable new features in the LibreOffice 24.2 family:
GENERAL
• Save AutoRecovery information is enabled by default, and is always creating backup copies
• Fixed various NotebookBar options, with many menu improvements, better print preview support, proper reset of customised layout, and enhanced use of radio buttons
• The Insert Special Character drop-down list now displays a character description for the selected character (and in the tooltip when you hover over it)
WRITER
• “Legal” ordered list numbering: make a given list level use Arabic numbering for all its numeric portions
• Comments can now use styles, with the Comment paragraph style being the default
• Improved various aspects of multi-page floating table support: overlap control, borders and footnotes, nesting, wrap on all pages, and related UI improvements
CALC
• A new search field has been added to the Functions sidebar deck
• The scientific number format is now supported and saved in ODF
• Highlight the Row and Column corresponding to the active cell
IMPRESS & DRAW
• The handling of small caps has been implemented for Impress
• Moved Presenter Console and Remote control settings from Tools > Options > LibreOffice Impress to Slide Show > Slide Show Settings, with improved labelling and dialogue layout
• Several improvements and fixes to templates
ACCESSIBILITY
• Several significant improvements to the handling of mouse positions and the presentation of dialogue boxes via the Accessibility APIs, allowing screen readers to present them correctly
• Improved management of IAccessible2 roles and text/object attributes, allowing screen readers to present them correctly
• Status bars in dialogs are reported with the correct accessible role so that screen readers can find and report them appropriately, while checkboxes in dialogs can be toggled using the space bar
SECURITY
• The Save with Password dialogue box now has a password strength meter
• New password-based ODF encryption that performs better, hides metadata better, and is more resistant to tampering and brute force
• Clarification of the text in the options dialogue box around the macro security settings, so that it is clear exactly what is allowed and what is not
The LibreOffice 24.2 family offers a host of enhancements and new features aimed at users sharing documents with or migrating from MS Office, building on the advanced features of the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity on the desktop, mobile and in the cloud.
A full description of all the new features can be found in the release notes [2].
LibreOffice for Enterprises
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/
Every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for enterprise customers is shared with the community on the master code repository and contributes to the improvement of the LibreOffice Technology platform.
Availability of LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community
LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple MacOS 10.15. Products based on LibreOffice Technology for Android and iOS are listed here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/
For users who don’t need the latest features and prefer a version that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 7.6 family, which includes several months of back-ported fixes. The current release is LibreOffice 7.6.5 Community.
The Document Foundation does not provide technical support for users, although they can get it from volunteers on user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: https://ask.libreoffice.org
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support the Document Foundation by making a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.
[1] Fixes in RC1: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/24.2.1/RC1. Fixes in RC2: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/24.2.1/RC2.
[2] Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/24.2