The eagerly awaited LibreOffice 7.3 has finally been released and in the announcement the Document Foundation emphasises the software’s improved compatibility. Work has been done to improve interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary formats. Likewise, there are also many new features that should make it easier for users to make the switch.
LibreOffice 7.3 is here
In regards to the interoperability and compatibility improvements, the team says:
- Development of new features, such as new handling of change tracking in tables and when moving text. This should improve compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.
- LibreOffice 7.3 is faster when opening large DOCX and XLSX/XLSM files. Likewise, the rendering speed of various complex documents and when using the Skia backend introduced with LibreOffice 7.1 has been improved.
In addition, the import and export filters have been improved. Here is an excerpt:
- DOC – greatly improved import of lists as well as numbers.
- DOCX – greatly improved import of lists and numbers. Hyperlinks attached to shapes are imported or exported by the software
- XLSX – reduced row height for Office XLSX files. Cell indentation does not increase on each save. Better support of XLSX charts.
- PPTX – corrected interactions and hyperlinks on images. Fixed import and export of PPTX slide footers. This also applies to hyperlinks on images and shapes. Transparent shadows are now available for tables.
New features in ScriptForge libraries
ScriptForge libraries facilitate the development of macros which have been extended by various functions.
There is also a function for exporting documents to PDF format with comprehensive management of PDF options.
The LibreOffice support has also been improved by the team. Special attention has been paid to help those switching from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice find their way around quickly. Instead of Fuzzysort for indexing, FlexSearch is used. The help is geared towards the current module of the users.
Download LibreOffice 7.3
As usual, you can find the latest version of the open source office suite in the download section of the project page. The software is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Additionally, the Fresh PPA for Ubuntu and distributions based on it will probably be updated soon.
The minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.12.
There is now also a download option for newer Apple processors based on ARM. It is now standard and you can find it, like the others, on the download page.
You can find the full release notes for LibreOffice 7.3 here.
LO 7.3 is now the fresh version, so to speak. And with it, version 7.2 becomes Still. The current version is LibreOffice 7.2.5. More conservative users should stay with this variant, because there have already been some maintenance rounds and bug fixes.
Discover more tech news here!