LibreOffice 7.3 Community, the new major version of the free office suite supported by volunteers for desktop productivity, is now available at https://www.libreoffice.org/download. Based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity on desktop, mobile, and cloud, it provides a wide range of enhancements aimed at users transitioning from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice or exchanging documents between the two office suites.
Types of Interoperability Improvements
There are three different types of interoperability enhancements:
New Feature Development
Development of new features, such as the new management of change tracking in tables and when text is moved, which positively impacts interoperability with Microsoft Office documents.
Performance Improvements
Performance enhancements when opening large DOCX and XLSX/XLSM files, improved rendering speed of certain complex documents, and new rendering speed improvements when using the Skia back-end introduced with LibreOffice 7.1.
Import/Export Filter Improvements
Improvements to import/export filters: DOC (greatly improved list/numbering import); DOCX (greatly improved list/numbering import; hyperlinks attached to shapes are now imported/exported; edit permission fixes; paragraph style change tracking); XLSX (decreased row heights for Office XLSX files; cell indentation does not increase on each save; edit permission fixes; better support for XLSX charts); and PPTX (fixed interactions and hyperlinks on images; corrected incorrect import/export of PPTX slide footers; fixed hyperlinks on images and shapes; transparent shadow for tables).
Additionally, LibreOffice help has also been improved to support all users, with particular attention to those transitioning from Microsoft Office: search results—now using FlexSearch instead of Fuzzysort for indexing—are focused on the user's current module, while help pages for Calc Functions have been reviewed for accuracy and completeness and are linked to the Calc Function wiki pages. Help pages for the ScriptForge scripting library have also been updated.
The ScriptForge libraries, which simplify macro development, have been extended with various features: the addition of a new Chart service to define charts stored in Calc spreadsheets; a new PopupMenu service to describe the menu to be displayed after a mouse event; an enhanced option for printer management, including a list of fonts and printers; and a feature for exporting documents to PDF format with full PDF option management. All services are available with identical syntax and behavior for Python and Basic.
LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, starting with native support for the OpenDocument (ODF) format - surpassing proprietary formats in terms of security and robustness - to superior support for DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX files. Furthermore, LibreOffice provides filters for a large number of legacy document formats, thereby giving ownership and control back to users.
Microsoft files are still based on the deprecated proprietary format set by ISO in 2008, rather than the ISO-approved standard, thus hiding a great deal of artificial complexity. This leads to management issues with LibreOffice, which by default uses a true open standard format (the OpenDocument format).
LibreOffice 7.3 is now natively available for Apple Silicon, a series of processors designed by Apple and based on ARM architecture. This option has been added to those available by default on the download page.
A description of all new features is available in the release notes [1]
Contributors to the LibreOffice 7.3 Community
The new features in the LibreOffice 7.3 Community have been developed by 147 contributors: 69% of the code validations come from the 49 developers employed by three companies sitting on the TDF advisory board - Collabora, Red Hat, and allotropia - or other organizations (including The Document Foundation), while 31% come from 98 individual volunteers.
Additionally, 641 volunteers have provided localizations in 155 languages. LibreOffice 7.3 Community is released in 120 different language versions, more than any other free or proprietary software, thus can be used in the native language (L1) by over 5.4 billion people worldwide. Furthermore, over 2.3 billion people speak one of these 120 languages as a second language (L2).
LibreOffice for Businesses
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise application family from ecosystem partners - for desktop, mobile, and cloud - with a wealth of value-added features. These include long-term support options, professional assistance, custom developments, and other benefits such as SLAs (Service Level Agreements): https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.
Despite this recommendation, an increasing number of companies are using the volunteer-supported version instead of the version optimized for their needs and supported by various companies within the ecosystem.
Over time, this poses a challenge for the long-term sustainability of the LibreOffice project, as it slows down the evolution of the project. In fact, every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for their business clients is shared with the community on the master code repository and enhances the LibreOffice Technology platform.
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. The slowdown in platform development negatively impacts users at all levels, and the LibreOffice project risks not meeting its expectations and potentials.
Migrations to LibreOffice
The Document Foundation has developed a migration protocol to assist companies in transitioning from proprietary office suites to LibreOffice, which is based on deploying an LTS version of the LibreOffice Enterprise family, along with migration advice and training provided by certified professionals offering 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, solid support for open standards, excellent compatibility, and certified partners' LTS options - is the ideal solution for businesses looking to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.
Availability of LibreOffice 7.3
LibreOffice 7.3 is immediately available from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. The minimum system 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 those 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 who therefore prefer a version that has undergone more testing and bug fixes relative to new features, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 7.2 family, which includes several months of backported fixes. The current version is LibreOffice 7.2.5.
The Document Foundation does not provide technical support to users, although it can be obtained from volunteers on user mailing lists and on 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 7.3 is built with the Document Liberation Project's document conversion libraries: https://www.documentliberation.org.
[1] Release notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.3
