Introduction to LibreOffice 24.8
LibreOffice 24.8 is the latest major release of the free office suite, supported by a community of volunteers and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems. Announced on August 22, 2024, this new version offers a plethora of new features as well as a significant improvement in interoperability. More than just an update, LibreOffice 24.8 stands out as the ideal solution for privacy-conscious users while ensuring performance comparable to market leaders.
Why Choose LibreOffice 24.8?
LibreOffice stands out for its commitment to user privacy. Unlike other office suites, it allows each user to control the confidentiality of their documents, deciding whether or not to share personal information. For those handling sensitive or confidential data, this suite represents an essential alternative.
Complete Respect for Privacy
One of the new features of LibreOffice 24.8 is the enhanced automatic removal of personal information upon saving. With the option "Remove personal information on save" in the security settings, details such as the author's name, timestamps, or print settings are no longer exported, ensuring greater privacy.
Improved Compatibility and Interoperability
LibreOffice 24.8 is based on the LibreOffice Technology engine, a unified platform that ensures consistency between the desktop, mobile, and cloud versions of the suite. This platform guarantees a seamless user experience and perfectly interoperable documents according to ISO standards, whether with open formats (ODT, ODS, ODP) or proprietary formats like Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX).
In comparison with other solutions, the OOXML format presents artificial complexities that can lead to malfunctions. LibreOffice 24.8 strives to minimize these risks by ensuring faithful conversion of these documents while adhering to open standards.
New Features of LibreOffice 24.8
Writer: Notable Improvements for Text Editing
Users of Writer, LibreOffice's word processing tool, will benefit from several new features that facilitate editing and formatting. Among the major innovations are:
- Improved management of formatting characters.
- A wider and more readable comments panel.
- A new dialog for inserting hyperlinks more easily.
- The addition of cross-references via drag-and-drop from the Navigator.
Additionally, the management of hyphenation has been optimized with options to exclude certain words or to apply intelligent hyphenation between components of a compound word.
Calc: Enhanced Power for the Spreadsheet
Calc, LibreOffice's spreadsheet tool, benefits from new functions such as XLOOKUP, SEQUENCE, and UNIQUE. These additions meet the needs of advanced users while optimizing multithread calculation performance. Furthermore, Calc's interface has been refined with an offset focus rectangle for better visibility of cell content.
Impress and Draw: A Smoother Experience for Presentations
In Impress and Draw, users can now scroll through slides in normal view while adjusting notes via a collapsible pane. Additionally, modifications made in Slideshow or Presenter Console mode are immediately applied, even on multiple screens.
Chart: New Types of Charts for Advanced Visual Analysis
Chart introduces “Pie-of-Pie” and “Bar-of-Pie” charts, allowing for the subdivision of a chart segment into additional sectors or bars. This innovation facilitates the import of similar charts created with Microsoft Office.
Accessibility and Security: Notable Progress
LibreOffice 24.8 enhances its accessibility with better formatting option management, now fully compatible with screen readers. On the security side, a new password encryption mode for ODF files has been introduced, ensuring greater protection of sensitive data.
An Active and Engaged Community
LibreOffice 24.8 is the result of the work of 171 contributors, with 57% coming from partner companies like Collabora and Red Hat. The community also includes 188 volunteers who translated the interface into 120 languages, making this office suite accessible to over 5.5 billion people worldwide.
LibreOffice for Businesses
For large-scale deployments, The Document Foundation recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family, which offers features dedicated to businesses, along with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) ensuring professional support. Migrations to LibreOffice are also facilitated through a specific protocol including long-term support, migration consulting, and training.
Conclusion
LibreOffice 24.8 continues to evolve while remaining true to its core principles: providing a free, privacy-respecting, and high-performance alternative while adapting to the diverse needs of users. Whether for individuals, businesses, or government organizations, LibreOffice 24.8 stands as a credible, flexible solution that respects everyone’s freedom.
To download LibreOffice 24.8 or learn more about this version, visit the official download page.
