Author: Mike Saunders

The LibreOffice project does extensive testing of every major update before release. But as it’s a large piece of software used in millions of different ways across the whole world, sometimes there are issues with certain setups. So The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind the suite, has expanded its team with a new QA Analyst, Bogdan Buzea. Let’s hear from him:

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’ve worked as an accountant for almost all my life here in Romania. As a hobby, over the last eight years, I have been involved as a volunteer in LibreOffice Quality Assurance. I was involved mainly in LibreOffice Writer, which I used most of the time in my accountant work, and I wanted to see things improve.

What’s your new role at TDF, and what will you be working on?

Since mid-September 2026, I have taken on the role of Quality Assurance Analyst. I go through bugs reported to Bugzilla, and triage them:

• Real bugs: Some reports identify real bugs in LibreOffice, and developers across the world do a great job fixing them day by day. More than 30% of the reported bugs get fixed.
• Missing information: Sometimes we receive an initial bug report, but no information or how to reproduce it or no sample document to test it. Imagine getting a report saying “When I search for something LibreOffice crashes”. This information by itself is not enough. Were diacritics involved? Were multiple documents opened at the same time? Was it a recent version of LibreOffice or an older one? Does it happen all the time? Has it happened before across many versions, or is it just in the new version? You could find more information on how to properly open a new bug report so we can test faster and find a solution.
• Duplicates: Some issues have already been reported, so we close those bugs as duplicates of older reports on the same problem. It’s completely fine for multiple users to report the same issue – in fact, it lets us know that the bug is very important to many people. So, if your report is closed as a duplicate, don’t be sad; you helped increase the priority of that specific bug report.
• User guidance: Other reports come from users doing things in an unintended way. While we assist them, a better way to get help is through the Ask LibreOffice forum, LibreOffice Online Help or the LibreOffice Documentation Shelf. There is a lot of information right where you needed it, and the articles and documentation available here frequently receive updates and contributions from volunteers worldwide. Often, users will say, “Great, it is working now! I didn’t know that I can do things that way.” To improve this, we work on updating documentation and adding tooltips to assist users as they work. If the software isn’t clear about how to use a specific feature, please report a new bug.

I also work on finding regressions. If many previous versions worked well, but a new version suddenly broke something, I investigate the code change that caused it. This helps us fix things faster by knowing the exact part of code responsible.

How can users of LibreOffice help you in this work?

Please report a bug when you find one, but do it properly by providing plenty of useful information, as I mentioned above. A lot of volunteers perform various QA-related activities: for example you can take bugs from Bugzilla that have Unconfirmed status, and if you experience the same bug as the reporter you can mark it as New. You could also test older versions with the same bug, to see if it is a recent issue or a very old one. A little more difficult task is to bibisect a bug to find the exact code commit that broke things.

Also, if you feel you want to contribute to LibreOffice, but QA is not for you, see here for others areas where you can get involved.