Are you using Apache OpenOffice? Have you recently tried to open a .odt, .ods or .odp file and received this error message? “This document was created by a newer version of OpenOffice. It may contain features not supported by your current version.”
In this case, the document probably wasn’t created in OpenOffice, but in LibreOffice, a successor project. LibreOffice 7.0 introduced support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3, which includes many new features and benefits.
LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice share the same roots, and while Apache OpenOffice’s last major release (4.1) was back in 2014, LibreOffice has since been developed much further with extra features and updates.
LibreOffice’s documentation community creates handbooks, guides, tutorials and other resources to help users get the most out of the software. Everyone is welcome to join the team and help out – it’s a great way to build up experience for a possible career in technical writing!
A big thanks to Paul for his work, and making his content available under a Creative Commons license, for everyone to share! Follow him on Twitter and Mastodon.
We’re just over half-way through the Month of LibreOffice, November 2020, in which we award sticker packs to all contributors in our projects and community! (Plus, a bonus chance to win extra merchandise: a mug, T-shirt or hoodie.)
So how’s it going? Well, we’ve already awarded 262 sticker packs:
Is your name/username not on that page yet? Do something about it! There are many ways to help out – you don’t need to be a programmer. Let’s see…
How to get your stickers
There are many ways you can help out – and you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…
Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.
First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 7.0.3”.
Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter or Mastodon! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.
Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started.
Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
Join in! We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Mastodon and Twitter accounts until the end of the month…
The LibreOffice Documentation Team is happy to announce the availability of the LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.0, the most comprehensive guide for the Calc module, updated to the latest version of LibreOffice.
The Guide is available in PDF format and contains 545 pages, covering all basic and advanced features of the spreadsheet module of LibreOffice, and is a must-read book for exploiting the maximum of LibreOffice Calc.
It’s time for another batch of presentations and workshops from the recent openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference 2020! You can see them in the YouTube playlist, and here are the individual videos (apologies for the not-perfect audio in some places):
Marketing and social media in LibreOffice (Mike Saunders):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference 2020: Recruiting for LibreOffice globally and locally through volunteer platforms (Ilmari Lauhakangas):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The history and pre-history of LibreOffice (Michael Meeks):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Faster Jail Creation with Bind-Mount (Ashod Nakashian):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The ODF TC GitHub (Svante Schubert):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
LibreOffice in your browser – WebAssembly & other neat hacks to make that happen (Thorsten Behrens):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The ODF Toolkit (Svante Schubert):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Implementation Detail (Stephan Bergmann):
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
LibreOffice 7.0, released in August 2020, includes new branding elements for the splash screen and other places, thanks Bayu Rizaldhan Rayes and the Design team. Now Barbara Tostes has made a 3D model for use in Blender, so if you want to make a video or animation about LibreOffice, check it out!
