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
Berlin, 14 November 2024 – LibreOffice 24.8.3, the third minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family of the free open source, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux, is available at www.libreoffice.org/download. The release includes over 80 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 24.8.2 [1] to improve the stability and robustness of the software, as well as interoperability with legacy and proprietary document formats. In addition, support for Visio template format VSTX has been added. LibreOffice is the only office suite that respects the privacy of the user, ensuring that the user is able to decide if and with whom to share the content they create. It even allows deleting user related info from documents. As such, LibreOffice is the best option for the privacy-conscious office suite user, while offering a feature set comparable to the leading product on the market. Also, LibreOffice offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes by using all the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away. The biggest advantage over
The LibreOffice Engineering Steering Committee (ESC) has appointed Prof. Rafael Henrique Palma Lima, from Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPr) as the newest certified LibreOffice developer. Prof. Lima has been contributing new code to LibreOffice since 2020, and the committee has attested to the quality and value of his contributions to LibreOffice for this certification. We interviewed Prof. Lima, who tells us about the process and what areas of the code he works on.
The Annual Report of The Document Foundation describes the foundation’s activities and projects, especially in regard to LibreOffice and the Document Liberation Project. We’ve been posting sections of the 2023 report here on the blog, and now the full version is available in PDF format on TDF’s Nextcloud server in two different versions: low resolution (6.4MB) and high resolution (43.7MB). The Annual Report is based on the German version presented to the authorities. The document has been entirely created with free open source software: written contents have obviously been developed with LibreOffice Writer (desktop) and collaboratively modified with LibreOffice Writer (online), charts have been created with LibreOffice Calc and prepared for publishing with LibreOffice Draw, drawings and tables have been developed or modified (from legacy PDF originals) with LibreOffice Draw, images have been prepared for publishing with GIMP, and the layout has been created with Scribus based on the existing templates. We at The Document Foundation are very grateful to all contributors to our projects and communities in 2023 – none of this would be possible without you!
Translated by Timothy Brennan Jr. Rio de Janeiro, September 26, 2024 – The Brazilian LibreOffice community proudly presents its new edition of the Writer Guide 7.6 , based on LibreOffice 7.6 and with the innovations introduced in this version. The guide meets the need for LibreOffice documentation in Brazilian Portuguese and the Writer Guide will help all LibreOffice users in editing texts, monographs, theses, reports, minutes and much more.
