LibreOffice 6.3 with performance improvements

[Karlston]

LibreOffice 6.3 with performance improvements

A new version of the open source Office suite LibreOffice, LibreOffice 6.3, is now available. The new version can be downloaded for all supported operating systems from the official project website or by using built-in updating functionality.

 

The development team released the last major update in February 2019. LibreOffice 6.2 introduced an optional tabbed ribbon-like interface at the time.

 

The new version features performance improvements, a new document redaction option, Twain support in the 64-bit version on Windows, and improved compatibility with certain Microsoft Office document formats.

 

LibreOffice 6.3 introduces several major changes and improvements. One of the notable changes improves the program's loading and saving performance. The two core programs Writer (Word) and Calc (Excel) load and save some documents significantly faster in the release.

 

 

Writer loads certain ODT files, e.g. those with lots of bookmarks, as well as documents with large tables or embedded fonts significantly faster. Calc's loading performance of XLSX and ODS files, saving of XLS spreadsheets, and loading and rendering of files with VLOOKUP was improved considerably as well.

 

The new release features additional improvements. Copying of filter cells from Calc to Writer copies and pastes only the filtered cells into a table in Writer. Version 6.2 of LibreOffice pasted all cells, and pre-6.2 versions did not display a proper table in the document.

 

Other Writer improvements include that page backgrounds -- colour, gradient and tiled bitmaps -- cover the entire page, new bottom-to-top and left-to-right writing directions in table cells and text frames,  support for the importing of charts from Docs drawingML group shapes, and support for Word form controls as of this release.

 

The latter needs to be enabled under Tools > Options > Writer > Compatibility > Reorganize Forms menu to have it MS compatible.

 

The spreadsheet application Cacl features reworked sampling options and support for new spreadsheet FOURIER() functions.

 

Here is a quick overview of other improvements and changes:

• Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw have full Tabbed Compact UI versions. Select using View > User Interface.
• Multiple Impress animations may now be reordered using drag and drop.
• Fixes for OOXML preset shapes.
• Import of SmartArt from PPTX files improved.
• Firebird Migration Assistant is now enabled by default in Base.
• Math introduces support for harpoon and wideharpoon attributes.
• TWAIN module is now available as a standalone 32-bit shim executable (twain32shim.exe) so that 64-bit versions of LibreOffice for windows may use scanner.
• Option to adjust the number of saved searches in Find & Replace under Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced
• Tip of the Day shows a tip a day on start. Can be disabled.
• Release notes link displayed in the application after updates.
• Option to react documents. To use it, select Tools > Redact from the menu.

 

Redacted documents can be exported as PDF or ODG documents.

 

The full release notes of LibreOffice 6.3 are available on the Document Foundation Wiki website.

Closing Words

LibreOffice 6.3 is a big release that introduces several improvements and new features to the Office suite.  Better loading and saving performance, the redaction tool, and other changes need to be mentioned specifically in this regard.

 

 

 

Source: LibreOffice 6.3 with performance improvements (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)