When it comes to choosing the office programs that we want to use on our PC, we have several very interesting alternatives available. Apart from Microsoft Office, which most of us already know more than well, one of its main alternatives is LibreOffice.
To all this we must add that perhaps the greatest attraction of this other proposal that does not stop growing and improving, is that it is totally free. Contrary to what happens with the Redmond proposal, we can download and install LibreOffice without having to pay a single euro. In addition, the compatibility with Office is almost complete, so switching from one suite to another will not be a problem.
This is why LibreOffice continues to be considered the main alternative to Microsoft Office. In addition, its open source license makes it a very profitable product for both home users and companies, so more and more people are opting for this proposal.
LibreOffice is updated with major improvements
But, on the other hand, one of the concerns when moving from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice is the compatibility of the documents we would have in the past. How could it be otherwise, this is something that The Document Foundation, developers of the open source proposal, has been working tirelessly to solve.
We tell you all this because the new version of LibreOffice that we are talking about focuses precisely on this section. With these what we want to tell you is that the new LibreOffice specifically addresses these compatibility problems. With all this, what is desired is to facilitate the change for users from Microsoft Office.
Thus, LibreOffice 7.2 adds a significant number of improvements in interoperability with legacy DOC files, in addition to DOCX , XLSX, and PPTX files. Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format, so they incorporate a lot of hidden complexities. This causes handling problems with LibreOffice, which by default uses a true open standard format, OpenDocument Format .
LibreOffice 7.2 main new features
One of the most interesting sections of LibreOffice is that it is being developed with the collaboration of users from all over the world. In fact, now with the official announcement of version 7.2, it has been revealed that 232 volunteers provided contributions in no less than 151 languages. At the same time, we have learned that 70% of the code comes from 51 developers employed by three companies that are part of the TDF Advisory Council or other organizations. This includes The Document Foundation , while the remaining 30% is from individual volunteers.
Among the main novelties we can highlight a pop-up list to search for menu commands, a scrollable style selector, or a font panel in the sidebar. Also, there is a new list view for templates, which will be very useful. Background fills come to Writer to cover entire pages, or styles with a margin of separation. On the other hand, Calc can now filter by color and HTML tables now display captions.
We will also tell you that Printing and Drawing has new templates and you can now use several columns in the text boxes.
You can now try the new version of LibreOffice 7.2 on your PC at no cost, all from this link .