LibreOffice Review 2020 And Libre Office Download

Pros

• A full suite of office software
• No advert or features hidden behind paywalls
• Free
• Compatible with all Microsoft Office file formats
• Receives updates and new features always
• The best alternative to MS Office

Cons

• No quality technical support (you can’t fault it)
• Extra templates have to be downloaded and installed manually

We all need an office software suite for everyday tasks at home and office. Microsoft office is probably the most popular, but not everyone can afford MS office subscription. That is why there are free alternatives that offer almost the same features of PowerPoint, Word and Excel.

LibreOffice is one of the best alternatives, bringing us to this LibreOffice review and where to get free LibreOffice download. This software suite has earned a great reputation as one of the best free office suites out there. In fact, this software offers a feature you will not find in Microsoft Office.

What Is LibreOffice?

LibreOffice is an offshoot of the OpenOffice project developed by a big team of personate coders who deliver regular new features and updates to ensure LibreOffice keeps pace with premium office software.

With LibreOffice, you get the following six programs that offer you everything you ever need from an office suite.

1. Impress (presentations)
2. Writer (word Processing)
3. Dray (vector graphic)
4. Cals (spreadsheets)
5. Base (databases)
6. Math (mathematical formulae)

You can open and save files in different formats in LibreOffice. The best thing is that this software can open and save files in Microsoft Office formats including DOCX, DOC, PPT, PPTX, etc. If you are going to be sharing your file with people using Microsoft Word, LibreOffice is the perfect software suite for you.

RELATED: WPS Review: Get Free WPS Download

LibreOffice Review

As you already know, LibreOffice is one of the open source software examples that is widely used because it is efficient and free. I have used every office suit and found LibreOffice to be just as good as Microsoft Office. Of course, it is free unlike Microsoft Office that you have to subscribe to before you use it.

Another great thing about this open source software suite is that it can use codes, updates and features from OpenOffice without any hassle. That is why it is always up to date and always has its bugs fixed faster.

RELATED: LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice – Get LibreOffice Download For Free

Systems That Run LibreOffice

You can run LibreOffice on Windows, macOS and Linus. You can equally use it on your web browser, as it can be deployed online. The latest edition of LibreOffice offers much better file compatibility with the latest Microsoft Office documents.

LibreOffice Updates

LibreOffice’s latest release comes with improved Microsoft Office Open OOXML which includes ActiveX controls import/export and iSmartArt import for embedded text documents and spreadsheets, the export of cross-references to DOCX, the export of embedded video to PPTX, improvements to the PPTX filter and export of MailMerge field to DOCX.

This software gets updated regularly. With the latest updates, you can now export Writer documents to the ePub ebook format. It now also allows you to import QuarkXpress files. It means you can publish ebooks directly from LibreOffice now.

With the latest updates, you also get improved filters from importing Enhanced Metafile Format Plus Microsoft Office documents. Open Document Format (ODF) has also received a lot of improvement, making it easier for other ODF readers to display visuals.

Other significant improvements include:

Writer PDF Forms: It now has a form menu, which makes it easier to access features including the ability to design forms and create standards-compliant PDF forms. To speed up navigation, the Find toolbar with a drop-down list of search types has been enhanced. A new default table style has also been added, alongside a new collection of table styles to reflect evolving visual trends.

Calc command standardization: ODF 1.2-compliant functions FINFB, REPLACEB and SEARCHB have been added in order to improve support for the ISO standard format. Additionally, a selected group of shapes (image) or a cell range selection can now be exported in JPG or PNG format.

Improved Writer Mail Merge function: You can now use a Writer document or an XLSX file as a data source.

Impress enhancement: The default slide size is now changed to 16:9, to support the most recent factors of projectors and screens. Because of this, 10 new Impress templates have been added, and some of the old templates have been updated.

In addition, there have been minor improvements to user dictionaries, which now allow automatic compounding or affixation. Before, if you enter a new word, you will have to add the plural too or LibreOffice wouldn’t recognize it. For example, you would need to add “dog” and “dogs”. Now, you don’t need to add all forms of a new word because LibreOffice Hunspell spell checker can now automatically recognize a new word alongside its new affixes or compounds.

Also, if you are security conscious, you can now sign and encrypt your ODF documents with OpenPGP keys. If you want to enable this, you need to install GPG software for your operating system in order to generate a PGP key.

RELATED: Top 19 Open Source Software Examples – How They Work

User Experience

There is little to no difference between Microsoft’s productivity toolkit and LibreOffice. Although the open source software suite lacks Office’s built-in cloud storage option, you can easily remedy it by installing the Dropbox desktop software, which provides you with instant access to your account as if it was a folder on your PC.

The selection of templates might be a bit limited in LibreOffice, but you can easily remedy that by downloading available options in the project’s online repository. If you would also like to add more features, you can download plugins that will help you add extra features such as advanced grammar tool, improved accessibility options, extra language packs and plugins for other programs such as mind-mapping tool.

LibreOffice Download

LibreOffice download is free and you can download it now. If you want to give it a try and experience what I have said so far, you can download it below. It is completely free.

Download libreoffice latest version now

Conclusion

LibreOffice is free, so it is hard to fault it. Although it is free, it is competing with Microsoft Office.

This software is truly remarkable. If you don’t ever want to pay for office software again, you might want to give LibreOffice a try.