The Document Foundation is the non-profit entity that coordinates the LibreOffice project and community. In 2024 we had with elections for the foundation’s Membership Committee, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities (This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2024 – we’ll post the full version here soon.) Election of new Membership Committee (MC) The mission of the Membership Committee is to administer membership applications and renewals following the criteria defined in the Foundation’s Statutes. Members of the MC are directly elected by community members every two years, and serve for a two-year term. The Board of Directors consists of five members and three deputies. On July 15, Eliane Domingos – chairperson in the Board of Directors at TDF – announced the election for the next MC, and asked for nominations and self-nominations. On August 27, she then announced that the nomination phase had ended, and that voting would run from 3 – 9 September. Around this time there were also three live “town-hall” Q+A meetings with the candidates, so that community members could ask questions and discuss the responses. We made video recordings from the second and third meetings, and
The Nepalese community mentored CS50 students in Nepal create their very first resume for securing internships! Our Nepalese community writes… LibreOffice is a powerful open source office suite for many users worldwide. One of the major components is the word processing software, LibreOffice Writer, which is a highly effective tool for all levels of users. We in the Nepalese community recently conducted a CV writing session titled “LibreOffice Writer – Creating Reusable CVs”, delivered by our Liaison for the Nepalese community, Mr Suraj Bhattarai. This session was one of the guest sessions for the first and second year CS50 students at IOE Purwanchal Campus, who went through the CS50 AI course this time. The purpose of the session was to help them articulate their learning from the CS50x and CS50 AI timeline into a presentable resume, together with their other strengths, to get their very first internship into the tech industry. Suraj shared key insights when writing resume/CVs; he mentioned that the fact that fancy CVs or Canva templates are not yet a trend among hiring managers who happen to be millennials. What sells for a peak career or a first internship is a standard resume template. Apart from online
Tell us a bit about yourself! I live in Lagos, Nigeria, and I spend my time dabbling into user experience design with research, although these days, I’m diving deeper into research. I’m a big fan of books, especially well-written fiction. Music is also a huge part of my life. Let’s just say I love anything that sounds good and sing-alongs during work. What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now? I am an Outreachy intern working on improving the LibreOffice Writer templates with guidance from my mentor, Heiko Tietze. I have spent the last month understanding the community’s pain points by carrying out a survey, analysing their responses and working to create functional templates that they need. Currently, I am iterating on priority templates like DIN 5008 Business Letter, resume and academic writing templates. I am also doing some more research on template standards and reflecting on how to create templates that would help users. My top priority is to understand styling and implement it in the templates I am creating and also curate template contents that fits into prospective user preferences. Why did you choose to join the project, and how was the experience? During my
The new major release provides many user interface and accessibility improvements, plus the usual interoperability features Berlin, 6 February 2025 – LibreOffice 25.2, the new major release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux is available on our download page. LibreOffice is the best office suite for users who want to retain control over their individual software and documents, thereby protecting their privacy and digital life from the commercial interference and the lock-in strategies of Big Tech. LibreOffice is the only office suite designed to meet the actual needs of the user – not just their eyes. It offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes, optimising the space available to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away. It is also the only software for creating documents (that may contain personal or confidential information) that respects the user’s privacy, ensuring that the user can decide if and with whom to share the content they create, thanks to the standard and open format that is not used as a
LibreOffice 25.2 – our next major release – is due to arrive next week! But while you’re waiting, here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more… We started 2025 by highlighting Hazard: A LibreOffice Impress template to play Jeopardy-like games. Marcial Machado recently posted on Reddit about his “fully-featured LibreOffice Impress template for creating Jeopardy-style games. Just add your questions and categories, and you’re good to go!” So we talked to him to find out more! Next, our Documentation team announced the LibreOffice Calc Guide 24.8. This has been updated to reflect the changes in the latest stable branch of the suite. Great work, everyone! Our guidebooks are being translated too, thanks to our industrious localisation communities. In January, the Czech community released its translation of the Getting Started Guide 24.8. Then we put the spotlight on another extension: localwriter, an optional LibreOffice Writer extension for local generative AI. LibreOffice is very privacy-oriented and includes no AI features out-of-the-box – but we know that many users are interested in AI technology, so the (again, purely optional!) extension using locally installed tools is worth a
Dione Maddern and The Documentation Team are proud to announce the immediate availability of the LibreOffice Calc Guide 24.8, an update of the existing Calc Guide 24.2 with enhancements taken from the current LibreOffice 24.8 Calc module. The book was reviewed for clarity, readability and content additions, notably the Calc database table referencing in formulas, removal of deprecated JavaScript debugger and refactoring of the Calc’s chart topic – in which the chapter on charts was split in two, one for the chart basics and the second for the chart types. Dione Maddern, Calc editor says: I took on the challenge of compiling the Calc Guide because I wanted to learn about advanced editing and working with master documents. While I’ve previously worked on large documents in the engineering and insurance industries, documents were often compiled with clunky cut-and-paste techniques which created a lot of errors and labor-intensive rework. Working on the Calc Guide 24.8 was a great opportunity to expand my skills in LibreOffice and document production generally. It was also a wonderful opportunity to work with the LibreOffice Documentation Team. I had a great time working with such a fun and supportive team. Special thanks to Ed Olson, Lisa
