LibreOffice 25.2 released, bringing multiple improvements to the suite

LibreOffice is one of the best alternatives to the Microsoft Office suite, offering programs like Writer, Calc, and Impress to match Microsoft's offerings.

Some people might think it is exclusive to Linux (since it's one of the few decent alternatives to Microsoft Office on Linux), but it's actually available on all major desktop platforms, including Linux, macOS, and Windows, as well as mobile (Android and iOS).

LibreOffice just got a big update, version 25.2, its first major update of the year, bringing multiple bug fixes and new features.

One major improvement in version 25.2 is its ability to read and write Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) 1.4. If you work with legal or academic documents, you'll be glad to know that Writer now supports inline headings, something Microsoft Word has supported since Word 97.

Here's the changelog:

Writer

 

• Track Changes in Writer: Enhancement to identify a click on a tracked change in the document by highlighting the corresponding entry in the "Manage Changes" window and sidebar panel. This enhancement greatly improves the ability to manage a large number of changes in long documents. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#161717 tdf#162018
• Fixed handling of line object transformations in the DOCX import of Writer. (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Improved font fallback in the DOCX import of Writer (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Added Group and Mono controls to the Asian Phonetic Guide dialog. By default, the Asian Phonetic Guide dialog decomposes a selection into words for annotation. The Group button allows annotating the entire selection. The Mono button allows annotating each character individually. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#107184 tdf#156543
• Improved interactivity for LOK clients in Writer's layout (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Added options to set a default zoom level for opening documents, overriding zoom level stored in documents (Oliver Specht, Allotropia) tdf#132274
• Added option to promote a reply comment into a root comment (Jaume Pujantell, Collabora) 98cd8bac
• Writer TextBoxes now handle page captures (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Boundaries are now toggled independently of Formatting Marks, are controlled per Tools ▸ Options ▸ Writer ▸ Formatting Aids, and switched on/off with View ▸ Boundaries. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#74386, tdf#163856

  

   

Calc

 

• Support import and export of connections.xml in OOXML. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#158857

• A statusbar icon will indicate when Data ▸ Calculate ▸ AutoCalculate is switched off. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#127937

   

 

Icon indicating that AutoCalculate is disabled

 

• A 'Handle Duplicate Records' dialog to select/remove duplicate records in Calc. Place the active cell on some data or select some range, then Data ▸ Duplicates... (Sahil Gautam) tdf#85976

   

 

• Both the Function Wizard dialog and Functions Sidebar deck received improvements to searching and user experience. (Ahmed Hamed) tdf#161534 tdf#161296 tdf#161543
• When selecting all while in a cell with neighbouring data, the selection will cover the neighbouring cells. The next call of Select All will select the full sheet. This behaviour can be disabled by setting the expert option SelectRangeBeforeAll to false. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#161641
• Solver models can now be saved into spreadsheets and Solver is able to provide a sensitivity analysis report. (Rafael Lima) tdf#160062 tdf#157519

 

Impress

 

• The Interaction dialog (click actions) is now async (Hubert Figuière, Collabora) 25b61215
  • enable the ".uno:AnimationEffects" command in LOKit 729e333c
  • enable the ".uno:ExecuteAnimationEffect" command in LOKit ff3a316f
• Per-paragraph semi-transparent shape text in Impress' SVG export (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Automatic repeating of slides can now be activated in windowed mode. (Ariel Darshan) tdf#163858
• Soft edge and glow effects are now allowed in text frame objects (Balázs Varga, allotropia) tdf#135320

Apart from improvements to the core programs in the suite, the help pages, which you can access by pressing F1 or going to Help > LibreOffice Help, are finally available in dark mode. Here’s what they looked like before version 25.2:

And this is what it looks like now:

In terms of accessibility, the latest LibreOffice update brings some much-needed improvements. System settings to disable animations are now more consistently respected, and users get finer control over animations directly within LibreOffice’s settings.

On top of that, user interface elements now report an accessible identifier, making it easier for assistive technologies like the Orca screen reader on Linux and NVDA on Windows to reliably recognize specific elements. Windows users will also benefit from better accessible relations, allowing NVDA to read Writer documents from top to bottom without issues.

Beyond accessibility, proofing tools and language support have also been improved. The spell-check dictionaries for English, Danish, Mongolian, Thai, Korean, Ukrainian, and Slovak have been updated as well.

The Document Foundation states that extensions and features relying on Python will not work with this version on Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. Additionally, LibreOffice will stop functioning on these operating systems when version 25.8 is released. You can view the full changelog on The Document Foundation's wiki.

You can view the full changelog on The Document Foundation's wiki.

Linux users can download it as an RPM or DEB package. On Windows, it's available through our software page or the official website. If you're on a Mac, LibreOffice appears as a paid app on the Mac App Store, but a free version is still available here (Apple Silicon | Intel).

Source

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