The famous open-source office suite LibreOffice has just received a major update to version 24.2. Several significant additions further improve one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office.
In the world of free office software, the LibreOffice suite is undoubtedly the best known of the solutions available. Although it suffers from some performance problems on the largest and most complex documents, and has a slightly aging user interface, out of step with current design canons, it still has significant advantages that allow it to perform well. establish itself as the most complete open-source office suite to date. The community behind the development and maintenance of the project also remains very active, the proof is with the arrival of version 24.2 of the office suite, which inaugurates a small change in the numbering of versions and above all brings a large number of improvements and corrections.
LibreOffice 24.2: more readable version numbering
The Document Foundation, the non-profit organization that oversees the development of the LibreOffice project, announced last summer that the version numbering system for the free office suite would change. Until now, the project followed a classic sequence, initiated with version 3.3 released in 2011 and reaching number 7.6 with the version released in May 2023. Considering that after “twelve years and five development cycles“the project had reached maturity and had become”incredibly difficult to develop entirely new features“, The Document Foundation has taken action that future updates would mainly consist of “improvements and refinements to the existing“.
As a result, the numbering system changes as of this update, to adopt a chronological format based on the publication date of each version, where the first two digits represent the vintage and the digit after the dot the month of the ‘year. Thus, the current version number is 24.2, because it was published in February 2024. This new system, already adopted by many free software players such as Canonical for its Linux Ubuntu distribution, offers much better readability of the publication history of different versions of software and makes it easier for users to know if the applications they use are up to date.
LibreOffice 24.2: a multitude of improvements and bug fixes
Although The Document Foundation recognizes that LibreOffice will no longer experience any major developments (for the moment), this does not mean that the community in charge of the development and maintenance of the project is abandoning the office suite, rather opposite. Version 24.2 of LibreOffice indeed brings, as promised, a large number of small functional new features, bug fixes, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office files and improvements to ergonomics and accessibility. The full list of changes brought by this update is available, in English, at the official release notes page. Without making an exhaustive review, here are some of the most significant new features of the latest version of LibreOffice.
Co-editing the same document by several users has become an essential feature of any good office software. To facilitate collaboration and tracking successive modifications, the Writer word processor now allows you to apply preformatted and customizable styles to comments written by different users of a document, which greatly facilitates reading.
Along the same lines, the Browser now groups comments within the same section of its tree structure, making them much easier to navigate. The Browser also gains the ability to easily create hypertext links within documents, by simply dragging and dropping elements to point to a selection of text.
The Calc spreadsheet is enriched with a function search field in the dedicated side panel, which is very practical for constructing complex calculation formulas without opening an additional search window which hides the work area. The preview of fonts in cells also makes a return and allows you to have a preview of the appearance of a text before applying the change, and the keyboard shortcuts for moving between worksheets (Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down) now allow a cyclical rotation between the first and last sheet of the workbook.
A highly anticipated new accessibility feature is also making its appearance in the spreadsheet. By activating the corresponding option in the menu Tools > Options > LibreOffice Calc > Displayit is now possible to automatically highlight the row and column of the currently selected cell.
The Impress slideshow creation tool offers the possibility of using “small capitals” to design ever more sophisticated and elegant presentations. It is also enriched with new options for remote control of presentations and broadcast management in the event of multiple screens.
Less known than the other modules of the office suite, the Maths application, an editor of mathematical formulas very popular with students, teachers or researchers, now allows you to select a personalized font and now manages the writing of right-to-left, which greatly facilitates collaboration with certain non-French speakers.
All these new features are just some of the many changes contained in version 24.2 of LibreOffice, to which we could add the significant improvement of the automatic document recovery function in the event of an unexpected shutdown of the software, the addition of Explanatory tooltips in the Configuration Expert console or many new editable metadata fields in the document properties.
The wealth of new functional features and improvements brought by this update confirms that the LibreOffce office suite remains a lively open-source project, constantly evolving and rigorously maintained by its community. All its qualities make it a solid, convincing and effective alternative to the giants of proprietary and private office suites, which gorge themselves on users’ personal data in addition to siphoning off their pocket change with ever more expensive subscriptions.