A brand new ver­si­on of the best free open source office suite, based on the Libre­Of­fice Tech­no­lo­gy plat­form for desk­top, mobi­le and cloud productivity

Ber­lin, Febru­ary 3, 2021 – Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Com­mu­ni­ty, the vol­un­teer-sup­port­ed ver­si­on of the best open source office suite for desk­top pro­duc­ti­vi­ty, is available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download. The Com­mu­ni­ty label under­lines the fact that the soft­ware is not tar­ge­ted at enter­pri­ses, and not opti­mi­zed for their sup­port needs.

For enter­pri­se-class deploy­ments, TDF has stron­gly recom­men­ded the Libre­Of­fice Enter­pri­se fami­ly of appli­ca­ti­ons from eco­sys­tem part­ners – for desk­top, mobi­le and cloud – with long-term sup­port opti­ons, pro­fes­sio­nal assis­tance, cus­tom fea­tures and other bene­fits, inclu­ding SLA (Ser­vice Level Agree­ments): https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

Despi­te this recom­men­da­ti­on, an incre­asing num­ber of enter­pri­ses have cho­sen the ver­si­on sup­port­ed by vol­un­teers over the ver­si­on opti­mi­zed for their needs. This has had a two­fold nega­ti­ve con­se­quence for the pro­ject: a poor use of vol­un­teers’ time, as they have to spend their time to sol­ve pro­blems for busi­ness that pro­vi­de not­hing in return to the com­mu­ni­ty, and a net loss for eco­sys­tem companies.

This has been a pro­blem for the sus­taina­bi­li­ty of the Libre­Of­fice pro­ject, becau­se it has slo­wed down the evo­lu­ti­on of the soft­ware. In fact, every line of code deve­lo­ped by eco­sys­tem com­pa­nies for their cus­to­mers is shared with the glo­bal com­mu­ni­ty, and this impro­ves the pro­duct and fos­ters the growth of the Libre­Of­fice Tech­no­lo­gy platform.

Both Libre­Of­fice Com­mu­ni­ty and the Libre­Of­fice Enter­pri­se fami­ly of pro­ducts are based on the Libre­Of­fice Tech­no­lo­gy plat­form, which is the result of years of sus­tained deve­lo­p­ment efforts (see the white paper) with the objec­ti­ve of pro­vi­ding a sta­te of the art office suite not only for the desk­top but also for mobi­le and the cloud, fol­lo­wing the evo­lu­ti­on of the mar­ket­place sin­ce 2010.

Today, pro­ducts based on Libre­Of­fice Tech­no­lo­gy are available for major desk­top ope­ra­ting sys­tems (Win­dows, macOS, Linux and Chro­me OS), for mobi­le plat­forms (Android and iOS) and for the cloud. They may have a dif­fe­rent name, accor­ding to each com­pa­ny brand stra­tegy, but they share the same Libre­Of­fice uni­que advan­ta­ges, robust­ness and flexibility.

By using the Com­mu­ni­ty label we under­line the importance of enter­pri­se cus­to­mers con­tri­bu­ting to our mis­si­on, accor­ding to their abili­ty, and how much we app­re­cia­te their support.

Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Com­mu­ni­ty New Fea­tures [1]

Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Community’s new fea­tures have been deve­lo­ped by a lar­ge num­ber of code con­tri­bu­tors: 73% of com­mits are from deve­lo­pers employ­ed by com­pa­nies sit­ting in the Advi­so­ry Board – Col­la­bo­ra, Red Hat and CIB/allotropia – to ser­ve their enter­pri­se cus­to­mers, plus other orga­niza­ti­ons (inclu­ding TDF), and 27% are from indi­vi­du­al volunteers.

GENERAL

• New dia­log to sel­ect the User Inter­face fla­vor, aiming to pick the right UI based on each user’s own pre­fe­ren­ces at first start
• Impro­ved search for a matching prin­ter paper size for the prin­ted document
• Show all sup­port­ed files when adding a new exten­si­on in Exten­si­on Manager
• Print Pre­view is now updated asyn­chro­no­us­ly, to not block UI when adjus­ting set­tings in Print Dialog
• Addi­ti­ons Dia­log: to search, get and install exten­si­ons with one-click

WRITER

• New Style Inspec­tor to dis­play the attri­bu­tes of Para­graph and Cha­rac­ter Styl­es, and manu­al­ly for­mat­ted (Direct For­mat­ting) properties
• Default anchor for new­ly added images can be set using Tools ▸ Opti­ons ▸ Libre­Of­fice Writer
• Abili­ty to detect Uni­code, even if the impor­ted text file does not have the BOM (Byte Order Mark)
• Signi­fi­cant speed impro­ve­ment of find/replace operations

CALC

• Added an opti­on to mana­ge pas­ting with Enter key, which can be swit­ched on/off in the Tools ▸ Opti­ons ▸ Libre­Of­fice Calc ▸ Gene­ral dialog
• Added opti­on to sel­ect items in Auto­fil­ter win­dow cli­cking on all item’s row, in addi­ti­on to the checkbox
• Signi­fi­cant speed impro­ve­ment of Auto­fil­ter and find/replace operations

IMPRESS & DRAW

• Pos­si­bi­li­ty to add visi­ble signa­tures to exis­ting PDF files in Draw
• Pos­si­bi­li­ty to chan­ge ani­ma­ti­ons for seve­ral objects at once in Impress
• Addi­ti­on of “Pause/Resume” and “Exit”buttons to Presenter’s Screen
• Addi­ti­on of rea­li­stic soft blur­red shadows to objects
• Addi­ti­on of new phy­sics based ani­ma­ti­on capa­bi­li­ties and new ani­ma­ti­on effect pre­sets that use them

MACRO

• ScriptF­or­ge libra­ri­es: an exten­si­ble and robust coll­ec­tion of macro scrip­ting resour­ces for Libre­Of­fice to be invo­ked from user Basic or Python scripts

A video sum­ma­ri­zing the top new fea­tures in Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Com­mu­ni­ty is available on You­Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLutwM8XKvo and also on Peer­Tu­be: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/videos/watch/38ac180b-62b5-44b7-b649-74c7efe05758

Libre­Of­fice, the best tool for interoperability

Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Com­mu­ni­ty adds seve­ral inter­ope­ra­bi­li­ty impro­ve­ments with DOCX/XLSX/PPTX files: impro­ve­ments to Wri­ter tables (bet­ter import/export and manage­ment of table func­tions, and bet­ter sup­port for chan­ge track­ing in floa­ting tables); a bet­ter manage­ment of cached field results in Wri­ter; sup­port of spa­cing below the header’s last para­graph in DOC/DOCX files; and addi­tio­nal Smart­Art impro­ve­ments when import­ing PPTX files.

Libre­Of­fice offers the hig­hest level of com­pa­ti­bi­li­ty in the office suite are­na, start­ing from nati­ve sup­port for the Open­Do­cu­ment For­mat (ODF) – with bet­ter secu­ri­ty and inter­ope­ra­bi­li­ty fea­tures over pro­prie­ta­ry for­mats – to opti­mi­zed sup­port for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. In addi­ti­on, Libre­Of­fice includes fil­ters for many lega­cy docu­ment for­mats, and as such is the best inter­ope­ra­bi­li­ty tool in the market.

Migra­ti­ons to LibreOffice

The Docu­ment Foun­da­ti­on has deve­lo­ped a Migra­ti­on Pro­to­col to sup­port enter­pri­ses moving from pro­prie­ta­ry office sui­tes to Libre­Of­fice, which is based on the deploy­ment of a LTS ver­si­on from the Libre­Of­fice Enter­pri­se fami­ly, plus migra­ti­on con­sul­tancy and trai­ning sourced from cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sio­nals who offer CIOs and IT mana­gers value-added solu­ti­ons in line with pro­prie­ta­ry offe­rings. Refe­rence: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/.

In fact, Libre­Of­fice – thanks to its matu­re code­ba­se, rich fea­ture set, strong sup­port for open stan­dards, excel­lent com­pa­ti­bi­li­ty and long-term sup­port opti­ons from cer­ti­fied part­ners – repres­ents the ide­al solu­ti­on for busi­nesses that want to regain con­trol of their data and free them­sel­ves from ven­dor lock-in.

Avai­la­bi­li­ty of Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Community

Libre­Of­fice 7.1 Com­mu­ni­ty is imme­dia­te­ly available from the fol­lo­wing link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Mini­mum requi­re­ments for pro­prie­ta­ry ope­ra­ting sys­tems are Micro­soft Win­dows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.12.

Libre­Of­fice Tech­no­lo­gy based pro­ducts for Android and iOS are lis­ted here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/, while for App Stores and Chro­me­OS are lis­ted here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-from-microsoft-and-mac-app-stores/

For users who­se main objec­ti­ve is per­so­nal pro­duc­ti­vi­ty and the­r­e­fo­re pre­fer a release that has under­go­ne more test­ing and bug fixing over the new fea­tures, The Docu­ment Foun­da­ti­on main­ta­ins the Libre­Of­fice 7.0 fami­ly, which includes some months of back-por­ted fixes. The cur­rent ver­si­on is Libre­Of­fice 7.0.4.

The Docu­ment Foun­da­ti­on does not pro­vi­de tech­ni­cal sup­port for users, alt­hough they can get it from vol­un­teers on user mai­ling lists and the Ask Libre­Of­fice web­site: https://ask.libreoffice.org

Libre­Of­fice users, free soft­ware advo­ca­tes and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers can sup­port The Docu­ment Foun­da­ti­on with a dona­ti­on at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

Libre­Of­fice 7.1 is built with docu­ment con­ver­si­on libra­ri­es from the Docu­ment Libe­ra­ti­on Pro­ject: https://www.documentliberation.org

[1] Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.1

Press Kit

Down­load link: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/FQXoczJb9RrExFA