[tdf-announce] LibreOffice 7.3 Community is better than ever at interoperability

In addition to the majority of code commits being focused on 
interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats, there is a 
wealth of new features targeted at users migrating from Office, to 
simplify the transition

Berlin, February 2, 2022 – LibreOffice 7.3 Community, the new major 
release of the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop 
productivity, is available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download. 
Based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity 
on desktop, mobile and cloud, it provides a large number of improvements 
targeted at users migrating from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, or 
exchanging documents between the two office suites.

There are three different kinds of interoperability improvements:

• Development of new features, such as the new handling of change 
tracking in tables and when text is moved,  which have a positive impact 
on interoperability with Microsoft Office documents.

• Performance improvements when opening large DOCX and XLSX/XLSM files, 
improved rendering speed of some complex documents, and new rendering 
speed improvements when using the Skia back-end introduced with 
LibreOffice 7.1.

• 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; fix permission 
for editing; track change of paragraph style); XLSX (decreased row 
height for Office XLSX files; cell indent doesn't increase on each save; 
fix permission for editing; better support of XLSX charts); and PPTX 
(fixed interactions and hyperlinks on images; fix the incorrect 
import/export of PPTX slide footers; fix hyperlinks on images and 
shapes; transparent shadow for tables).

In addition, LibreOffice’s Help has also been improved to support all 
users, with a particular attention for those switching from Microsoft 
Office: search results – which are 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 linked to Calc Function wiki pages, while Help pages 
for the ScriptForge scripting library have been updated.

ScriptForge libraries, which make it easier to develop macros, have also 
been extended with various features: the addition of a new Chart 
service, to define charts stored in Calc sheets; a new PopupMenu 
service, to describe the menu to be displayed after a mouse event; an 
extensive option for Printer Management, with a list of fonts and 
printers; and a feature to export documents to PDF with full management 
of PDF options. The whole set of services is 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 
Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats in the areas of security and 
robustness – to superior support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. In 
addition, LibreOffice provides filters for a large number of legacy 
document formats, to return ownership and control to users.

Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format deprecated by 
ISO in 2008, and not on the ISO approved standard, so they hide a large 
amount of artificial complexity. This causes handling issues with 
LibreOffice, which defaults to a true open standard format (the 
OpenDocument Format).

LibreOffice 7.3 is available natively for Apple Silicon, a series of 
processors designed by Apple and based on the ARM architecture. The 
option has been added to the default ones available on the download page.

A video summarizing the top new features in LibreOffice 7.3 Community is 
available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Raw0LIxyoRU and 
PeerTube: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/w/iTavJYSS9YYvnW43anFLeC. A 
description of all new features is available in the Release Notes [1]

Contributors to LibreOffice 7.3 Community

LibreOffice 7.3 Community's new features have been developed by 147 
contributors: 69% of code commits are from the 49 developers employed by 
three companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board – Collabora, Red Hat and 
allotropia – or other organizations (including The Document Foundation), 
and 31% are from 98 individual volunteers.

In addition, 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, and 
as such can be used in the native language (L1) by over 5.4 billion 
people worldwide. In addition, over 2.3 billion people speak one of 
those 120 languages as their second language (L2).

LibreOffice for Enterprises

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the 
LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – 
for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a large number of dedicated 
value-added features. These include long-term support options, 
professional assistance, personalized developments and other benefits 
such as SLA (Service Level Agreements): 
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

Despite this recommendation, an increasing number of enterprises are 
using the version supported by volunteers, instead of the version 
optimized for their needs and supported by the different ecosystem 
companies.

Over time, this represents a problem for the sustainability of the 
LibreOffice project, because it slows down the evolution of the project. 
In fact, every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for their 
enterprise customers is shared with the community on the master code 
repository, and improves 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. Slowing down the 
development of the platform is hurting users at every level, and the 
LibreOffice project may fall short of its expectations and possibilities.

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 an LTS version from the LibreOffice 
Enterprise family, plus migration consultancy and training sourced from 
certified professionals who offer 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 LTS 
options from certified partners – is the ideal solution for businesses 
that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from 
vendor lock-in.

Availability of LibreOffice 7.3 Community

LibreOffice 7.3 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 7.2 
family, which includes some months of back-ported fixes. The current 
version is LibreOffice 7.2.5.

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

[1] Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.3

Press Kit

Download link: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/MnZEgpr86TzwBJi

Blog Permalink: 
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/02/02/libreoffice-73-community/

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Italo Vignoli - Marketing & PR
The Document Foundation & LibreOffice
email italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
mobile/signal +39.348.5653829


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