[tdf-announce] Announcement of LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community

Berlin, 29 February 2024 - LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community, the first minor 
release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal 
productivity in office environments, is now available at 
https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

The release includes more than 100 bug and regression fixes over 
LibreOffice 24.2[1] to improve the stability and robustness of the 
software. LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community is the most advanced version of 
the office suite, offering the best features and interoperability with 
Microsoft Office proprietary formats.

LibreOffice is the only office suite with a feature set comparable to 
the market leader. It also offers a range of interface options to suit 
all 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.

Highlights of LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community

The main advantage of LibreOffice over other office suites is the 
LibreOffice Technology engine, a single software platform for all 
environments: desktop, cloud and mobile. This allows LibreOffice to 
provide a better user experience and produce identical - and 
interoperable - documents based on both ISO standards: 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).

Most notable new features in the LibreOffice 24.2 family

GENERAL
    • Save AutoRecovery information is enabled by default, and is 
always creating backup copies
    • Fixed various NotebookBar options, with many menu improvements, 
better print preview support, proper reset of customised layout, and 
enhanced use of radio buttons
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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

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
    • 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

The LibreOffice 24.2 family offers a host of enhancements and new 
features aimed at users sharing documents with or migrating from MS 
Office, building on the advanced features of the LibreOffice Technology 
platform for personal productivity on the desktop, mobile and in the cloud.

A full description of all the new features can be found in the release 
notes [2].

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 enterprise 
customers is shared with the community on the master code repository and 
contributes to the improvement of the LibreOffice Technology platform.

Availability of LibreOffice 24.2.1 Community

LibreOffice 24.2.1 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 7.6.5 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] Fixes in RC1: 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/24.2.1/RC1. Fixes in RC2: 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/24.2.1/RC2.

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

Permalink: 
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/02/29/libreoffice-24-2-1/
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