The LibreOffice Conference 2022 is go! And we will be live streaming talks from the rooms, on our YouTube channel:
Category: LibreOffice
Lox365 extension: XLOOKUP (and more) for LibreOffice Calc
More news from the LibreOffice subreddit! User goose_pirate posted about an extension:
Hi everyone, I made this little extension for LibreOffice Calc which adds a few functions, currently FILTER, SORT, and XLOOKUP. I hope others will find this as useful as I do.
XLOOKUP is a function for finding things in a table by range or row. We asked goose_pirate for a bit of background on the extension:
I’ve been using both Excel and LibreOffice for many years and found the new(er) Excel functions like XLOOKUP to be really nice compared to the old VLOOKUP or INDEX MATCH. I wanted to use it in LibreOffice too, so I wrote this extension.
How I made it: I researched information about LibreOffice extensions, dissected a few such extensions made by others, and finally started my own. It wasn’t too bad, I was surprised no one has made something similar yet.
Great work, goose! 😊
Learn more and download here (in the “build” folder)
Crowdfund audio recording and playback in LibreOffice presentations!
LibreOffice’s presentation tool, Impress, includes a bunch of features for home and office use. But one thing that’s missing is recording and playback for audio comments in presentations.
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This feature is important in eLearning: in contrast to video recordings, audio recordings are stored per slide, and can be adjusted to match the individual pace of the presentation. This is particularly suitable in school, academic as well as corporate environments to make learning content and product presentations more interactive.
So, how can we get this feature in LibreOffice? Well, the CH Open association, which has been promoting open systems and standards in the Swiss ICT landscape for over 40 years, is organising a crowdfunding campaign to implement the feature. The project is estimated to cost €62,000 in total – with various milestones along the way.
Click here to learn more and participate!
Video tutorials for LibreOffice Writer, Calc and Impress
On the LibreOffice subreddit, we became aware of some useful tutorial videos created by Steven Davids. These cover various components of the suite, and show how to achieve common tasks.
We asked Steven about how he chooses the topics for his videos, and how he makes them:
My video tutorials come to me – I do not go and look for them. If I have a problem, I search for a solution on the web. I always assume I am not unique, and that many other people had or have the same problem. If I do not find a solution or one that is readily available, I struggle my way out to a solution. Then I share that solution via video! Why video? Because it seems to me people are lazy to read and video illustrations are just easier to understand.
The videos are very low budget and homemade. There are no costs for the software since I use free public open-source programs for the screen recorder and video editor. There are many such programs, but OBS Studio and Shotcut serves me very well. I often use LibreOffice Presentation to assist in presenting the material. The hardware is also low cost. I already have a laptop and mobile phone so there are not extra costs there. A mid-range microphone from Samson is indispensable and basically the only additional cost.
Click here to view the playlist on YouTube!
The Document Foundation releases LibreOffice on Apple’s Mac App Store
Berlin, September 19, 2022 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the release of LibreOffice on Apple’s Mac App Store, to support end users who want to get all of their desktop software from Apple’s proprietary sales channel. So far, LibreOffice on the Mac App Store was released by Collabora. TDF will charge a convenience fee of €8.99, which will be invested to support development of the LibreOffice project.
TDF releasing on the Mac App Store is an evolution over the previous situation, which reflects the project’s new marketing strategy: The Document Foundation is focused on the release of the Community version, while ecosystem companies are focused on a value-added long-term supported versions targeted at enterprises. The distinction has the objective of educating organizations to support the FOSS project by choosing the LibreOffice version which has been optimized for deployments in production and is backed by professional services, and not the Community version generously supported by volunteers.
“We are grateful to Collabora for having supported LibreOffice on Apple’s Mac App Stores for quite a long time”, said Italo Vignoli, LibreOffice Marketing. The objective is to fulfill the needs of individual and enterprise users in a better way, although we know that the positive effects of the change will not be visible for some time. Educating enterprises about FOSS is not a trivial task and we have just started our journey in this direction”.
The Document Foundation will continue to provide LibreOffice for macOS for free from the LibreOffice website, which is the recommended source for all users.
LibreOffice packaged for the Mac App Store is based on the same source code, but does not include Java – because external dependencies are not allowed on the store – and therefore limits the functionalities of LibreOffice Base. The software is also supported by volunteers who donate their time to help users.
Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libreoffice/id1630474372
LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community available for download
Berlin, September 15, 2022 – LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community, the first maintenance release of LibreOffice 7.4, the volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity on the desktop, is immediately available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel and Arm processors), macOS (Apple M1 and Intel processors), and Linux.
LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats for security and robustness – to superior support for MS Office files, to filters for a large number of legacy document formats, to return ownership and control to users.
Most Significant New Features of LibreOffice 7.4
GENERAL
• Support for WebP images and EMZ/WMZ files
• Help pages for the ScriptForge scripting library
• Search field for the Extension Manager
• Performance and compatibility improvements
WRITER
• Better change tracking in the footnote area
• Edited lists show original numbers in change tracking
• New typographic settings for hyphenation
CALC
• Support for 16,384 columns in spreadsheets
• Extra functions in drop-down AutoSum widget
• New menu item to search for sheet names
IMPRESS
• New support for document themes
A video summarizing the top new features of the LibreOffice 7.4 Community major release is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8M4UzqpqE and PeerTube: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/w/myZUTCytN28kuxDa5VXNgh. A description of all new features is available in the Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.4.
LibreOffice Technology Platform
Products based on the LibreOffice Technology platform – the transactional engine shared by all LibreOffice based products, which provides a rock solid solution with a high level of coherence and interoperability – are available for major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS), for mobile platforms (Android and iOS), and for the cloud.
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a large number of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLA (Service Level Agreements): https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/. All code developed by ecosystem companies for enterprise customers is shared with the community and improves the LibreOffice Technology platform.
LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS options from certified partners – is the ideal solution for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.
Availability of LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community
LibreOffice 7.4 Community is available from: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.12. LibreOffice Technology-based products 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 release that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 7.3 family, which includes some months of back-ported fixes and is currently at version 7.3.6.
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 with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.