[tdf-announce] LibreOffice 24.2 Community available for all operating systems

Berlin, 31 January 2024 - LibreOffice 24.2 Community, the new major 
release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite and the first to 
use the new calendar-based numbering scheme (YY.M), is now available at 
https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), 
macOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux. The new numbering scheme will help 
users keep their LibreOffice installation up to date.

LibreOffice is the only open source personal productivity office suite 
with a feature set comparable to the leading product on the market. It 
also offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, 
from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen form 
factors by optimising the space available on the desktop to put the 
maximum number of features just a click or two away.

The biggest advantage of LibreOffice over any other office suite is the 
LibreOffice Technology engine, a single software platform for all 
environments: desktop, cloud and mobile. This infrastructure allows 
LibreOffice to offer a better user experience and, most importantly, to 
produce identical - and perfectly interoperable - documents based on the 
two available ISO standards: the Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) 
for users concerned about compatibility, resilience and digital 
sovereignty and the proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).

Highlights of LibreOffice 24.2 Community

GENERAL

• Save AutoRecovery information is enabled by default, and is always 
creating backup copies. This reduces the risk of losing content for 
first-time users who are unfamiliar with LibreOffice settings.
• Fixed various NotebookBar options, with many menu improvements, better 
print preview support, proper resetting of customised layout, and 
enhanced use of radio buttons. This improves the experience for users 
familiar with the Microsoft Office UI.
• The Insert Special Character drop-down list now displays a character 
description for the selected character (and in the tooltip when you 
hover over it).

WRITER

• "Legal" ordered list numbering: make a given list level use Arabic 
numbering for all its numeric portions.
• Comments can now use styles, with the Comment paragraph style being 
the default. This makes it easier to change the formatting of all 
comments at once, or to visually categorise different types of comments.
• Improved various aspects of multi-page floating table support: overlap 
control, borders and footnotes, nesting, wrap on all pages, and related 
UI improvements.

CALC

• A new search field has been added to the Functions sidebar deck.
• The scientific number format is now supported and saved in ODF: 
embedded text (with number format like ###.000 E0); lower case for 
exponent (with number format like ###.000e0); exponent with empty '?' 
instead of '0' (with number format like 0.00E+?0).
• Highlight the Row and Column corresponding to the active cell.

IMPRESS & DRAW

• The handling of small caps has been implemented for Impress.
• Moved Presenter Console and Remote control settings from Tools > 
Options > LibreOffice Impress to Slide Show > Slide Show Settings, with 
improved labelling and dialogue layout.
• Several improvements and fixes to templates: added and improved 
placement of various placeholders; fixed order of slides; made fonts and 
formatting consistent; fixed styles and their hierarchy; improved ODF 
compliance; made it easier to use templates in languages other than 
English; fixed use of wrong fonts for CJK and CTL.

ACCESSIBILITY

• Several significant improvements to the handling of mouse positions 
and the presentation of dialogue boxes via the Accessibility APIs, 
allowing screen readers to present them correctly.
• Improved management of IAccessible2 roles and text/object attributes, 
allowing screen readers to present them correctly.
• Status bars in dialogs are reported with the correct accessible role 
so that screen readers can find and report them appropriately, while 
checkboxes in dialogs can be toggled using the space bar.

SECURITY

• The Save with Password dialogue box now has a password strength meter. 
This uses zxcvbn-c to determine the password strength.
• New password-based ODF encryption that performs better, hides metadata 
better, and is more resistant to tampering and brute force.
• Clarification of the text in the options dialogue box around the macro 
security settings, so that it is clear exactly what is allowed and what 
is not.

A full description of all the new features can be found in the release 
notes [1].

Contributors to LibreOffice 24.2 Community

There are 166 contributors to the new features of LibreOffice 24.2 
Community: 57% of code commits come from the 50 developers employed by 
three companies on the TDF Advisory Board - Collabora, allotropia and 
Red Hat - or other organisations, 20% from 8 developers at The Document 
Foundation, and the remaining 23% from 108 individual volunteers.

An additional 159 volunteers have committed to localisation in 160 
languages, representing hundreds of people providing translations. 
LibreOffice 24.2 Community is available in 120 languages, more than any 
other desktop software, making it available to over 5.5 billion people 
worldwide in their native language. In addition, over 2.4 billion people 
speak one of these 120 languages as a 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 wide range of dedicated 
value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs: 
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

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 all major 
desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile 
platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.

Migrations to LibreOffice

The Document Foundation has developed a migration protocol to help 
companies move from proprietary office suites to LibreOffice, based on 
the deployment of an LTS (long-term support) enterprise-optimised 
version of LibreOffice plus migration consulting and training provided 
by certified professionals who offer value-added solutions consistent 
with proprietary offerings. Reference: 
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/.

In fact, LibreOffice's mature code base, rich feature set, strong 
support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS options from 
certified partners make it the ideal solution for organisations looking 
to regain control of their data and break free from vendor lock-in.
Interoperability with Microsoft Office

LibreOffice 24.2 offers a host of improvements and new features aimed at 
users who share documents with or migrate from MS Office, building on 
the advanced features of the LibreOffice Technology platform for 
personal productivity on desktop, mobile and in the cloud. These users 
should check new releases of LibreOffice frequently, as progress is so 
rapid that each new version dramatically improves upon the previous.

A few of the most significant improvements:

• Writer: improved first page headers/footers OOXML import by using the 
first page property in the existing page style instead of creating a new 
page style just for the first page.
• Writer: templates optimised for Japanese text added to the 
Localisation category to improve interoperability with Microsoft Word 
for Japanese users.
• Writer: import of "drawing canvas" from DOCX documents, with 
connectors no longer imported as simple shapes but as true connectors, 
primitive shapes like ellipses imported as OOXML shapes (text inside the 
shape can now wrap), and multicolour gradients, theme colours and glow 
effects for shapes.
• OOXML: support for the SVG OOXML extension, which imports the SVG 
image (svgBlip element) instead of the fallback PNG, and exports the SVG 
image in addition to the fallback PNG image used when the svgBlip 
element is not supported (older MS Office versions).

LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office 
suite market, from native support for the Open Document Format (ODF) - 
which beats proprietary formats in terms of security and robustness - to 
superior support for MS Office files, as well as filters for a wide 
range of legacy document formats.

Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format deprecated by 
ISO in 2008, rather than the ISO-approved standard, so they hide a great 
deal of artificial complexity. This creates problems for users who are 
confident that they are using a true open standard.

Availability of LibreOffice 24.2 Community

The LibreOffice 24.2 Community is available at 
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for 
proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple 
MacOS 10.15. Products based on LibreOffice Technology for Android and 
iOS are listed here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/.

For users who don't need the latest features and prefer a version that 
has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation 
maintains the LibreOffice 7.6 family, which includes several months of 
back-ported fixes. The current release is LibreOffice 7.6.4 Community.

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 by making a donation at 
https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

[1] Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/24.2

Press Kit

Download link: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/i4LtiHDBbwJa9Cs

Permalink: 
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/01/31/libreoffice-24-2/
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Italo Vignoli - Marketing & PR
The Document Foundation & LibreOffice
email italo@documentfoundation.org
mobile/signal +39.348.5653829


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