Continuing our mission to provide the best LibreOffice documentation for our end users, the Documentation Team is proud to announce the release of the latest Writer Guide for LibreOffice 26.2.
Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, this guide covers all aspects of the LibreOffice Writer module—from creating simple one-page document to full book using the best practice in text editing, text formatting and document compilation.
This guide is the result of teamwork by LibreOffice Community volunteers. We extend special thanks to Dione Maddern, Claire Wood, Miklos Vajna, Ed Olson, B. Antonio Fernandez, Peter Schofield and Olivier Hallot.
“This is our first edition of the Writer Guide using Nextcloud Deck to manage the production process. It has been a bit of a learning curve for our team, but it has greatly improved task tracking and communication.” Said Dione Maddern, volunteer Writer Guide coordinator.
The guide was updated from LibreOffice 25.8 and 26.2 and included several new sections on new features as well as contents on features not yet documented in the previous editions. The Guide is up to date with LibreOffice 26.2 release and included the following updates:
- Chapter 2 – Working with Text: Basics: Updated to show improvements to the Hyphenation options in the Paragraph Style dialog.
- Chapter 3 – Working with Text: Advanced: Documents improvements to Writer’s tracking of interdependent changes and documents the new Reject but track new.
- Chapter 5 – Page Style Basics: Updated instructions for toggling the visibility of Boundaries and Formatting Aids and Page break examples moved from Chapter 8, Introduction to Styles.
- Chapter 6 – Formatting pages: Advanced: Content on Using Document Themes moved to Chapter 9, Working with Styles.
- Chapter 7 – Printing and Publishing: Updated information on standards for Reference XObjects.
- Chapter 8 – Introduction to Styles: Fixed out-of-order sections and figures, and reordered some sections to improve flow and clarity. Improved sections on the Styles sidebar deck and Creating paragraph styles. Page styles examples moved to Chapter 5, Page Styles Basics. Removed obsolete passage about anchoring settings being unavailable for Frame styles.
- Chapter 9 – Working with Styles: Added sections to document the Asian Typography, Asian Layout, and Text Grid features. Added a section to document the Inline Heading preset frame style. Removed obsolete section about character formatting.
- Chapter 10 – Working with Templates: Improved introduction. Improved sections on Updating a document by loading styles from a template, Other ways to manage templates, Creating a document from a template, and Creating a template from a document.
- Chapter 11 – Images and Graphics: Improved grammar and style in multiple sections. Added a section to document the Text within a shape feature.
- Chapter 13 – Tables: Added contents on table calculations
- Chapter 15 – Table of contents, Indexes and Bibliography: Updated nomenclature, Updated instructions for adding entries using the Bibliography Database window. Added a section on DOI References.
- Chapter 16 – Master documents: Chapter was entirely rewritten to improve clarity, completeness, and flow.
- Chapter 17 – Fields: Improved and clarified instructions on how to set and use variables fields.
- Chapter 18 – Forms: Added instructions for exporting to PDF forms.
- Chapter 19 – Spreadsheets, Charts, Other objects: Added instructions on how to create a chart from a writer table. Updated charts with data table addition.
- Chapter 20 Customizing Writer: Added sections on the Allow text to be dragged and dropped and DeepL Server options. Improved the section on the Load printer settings with the document option.
- Chapter 21 – User Interface Variants: Added a section documenting the Form tab in the Additional tabs section.
- Appendix A – Keyboard Shortcuts: This new Appendix was added with most important shortcut for text editing and word processing operation, organized by actions.
The Writer Guide is available in PDF, ODT format and can be read on line as web pages. To access the Guide, readers can use the following
- From LibreOffice software, choose Help > User Guides.
- From your browser, visit https://books.libreoffice.org
