![]() You won’t find translation or grammar-checking features, nor will you find an equivalent to Microsoft’s Quick Action Toolbar, where you can add icons for easy access to the features you use most. Worse, some of the most useful features in Microsoft's apps have never arrived on LibreOffice, partly because features seem to get added to the suite only when someone volunteers to do it. One disadvantage of this approach is that almost every interface feature that has ever been in Microsoft's apps remains in LibreOffice, long after Microsoft radically simplified its interface to reduce clutter and overlap. If you click inside a page header, you see a little box telling you that you're in a page header-just as Microsoft Word does, though LibreOffice clutters the little box with extra detail, including the current formatting style. For instance, Alt-equals acts as the Autosum key in Calc, just as it does in Excel. In the same way, many LibreOffice features look a lot like Microsoft's similar features. LibreOffice, like SoftMaker Office, lets you choose either a tabbed interface resembling the Ribbon interface that Microsoft has used in Office since 2007 or a traditional menu-and-toolbar interface that Microsoft and almost everyone else used in the 1990s.Īlso, if you don't know which keystroke to use in LibreOffice, there's a good chance it's the same as in Microsoft's apps. One advantage of this approach is that it makes LibreOffice more easily accessible to former Microsoft Office users. The suite has always tried to emulate Microsoft 365's apps, right down to Office's menu structure and shortcut keys. The long history of LibreOffice and its ancestors, OpenOffice and StarOffice, helps explain how it looks and feels today. (Credit: The Document Foundation) An Open-Source Approach Having them already at your fingertips with Google Workspace, Microsoft Office, or Apple iWork is more convenient. You can visit LibreOffice's vast library of third-party add-ons for some of these features, but the add-ons always have an awkward feel. Other things you don't get include built-in translation and research features, a dictation option, or a note-taking app. Most for-pay modern office suites have mobile apps and collaboration features, too. The two biggest things you don't get for free with LibreOffice are mobile apps and online collaboration features, which you do get for free with Google Workspace. Still, you probably use something else already, and whatever you use is likely to be more modern, elegant, and efficient than anything you'd get in LibreOffice’s clunky and sometimes arcane interface. You don't get anything for managing email, contacts, or calendars. That's an impressive set of tools for free. LibreOffice includes a word processor called Writer, a spreadsheet editor called Calc, a presentation app called Impress, a vector-drawing program called Draw, a database program called Base, and a math formula editor called Math. In this review, I describe the latest version. But the latest version isn’t an urgent upgrade unless you use the word processor’s bibliography feature, which is easier to manage in the current version. The two branches look alike, though the Fresh Branch seems slightly snappier and introduces a few conveniences and bug fixes. It's unclear why the Mac version costs more. If you want to support the app, you can buy the Windows version of the Still Branch from the Microsoft Store for $4.59 or from the macOS App Store for $8.99. You can also download the Still Branch, a more mature and probably more stable branch designed for enterprises, now at version 7.5.9. You can get the latest version of LibreOffice free by downloading it from By default, the download page gives you what LibreOffice calls its Fresh Branch, currently at version 7.6.4, which includes new features and enhancements that may not yet be bug-free. Our Editors' Choices remain Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, both of which are rock-solid stable with excellent interfaces. What holds back the free LibreOffice is its unwieldy interface and occasionally buggy performance. ![]() LibreOffice is also notably one of the few desktop-style office suites that costs nothing yet has a feature set that rivals Microsoft 365's. ![]() Open-source software appeals to government offices, financial firms, and other privacy-conscious users because they can examine the source code for vulnerabilities themselves. LibreOffice, now at version 7.6, is the best-known open-source office suite.
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