A brand new version of free, open-source office suite LibreOffice is ready to download.
LibreOffice 24.2 is the follow up to last year’s LibreOffice 7.6 release. A leap because the latest edition is the first to use a calendar-based version number (like Ubuntu’s own): 24 denotes 2024, and 2 denotes the month, February.
Switching to a date-based version number will allow LibreOffice users to know how up-to-date their version is. After all, LibreOffice 7.6 tells you nothing about when it was released, really.
LibreOffice 24.2 ships with 6 months worth of developments from 5098 commits, spanning the full breadth, from bug fixes and security buffs to UI tweaks, new features, and more of those ever-important interoperability improvements.
I expect you’re keen to learn more, so read on to find out what’s new in LibreOffice 24.2!
LibreOffice 24.2: New features
We all know we should save our work often (true for anything, not just documents) but if something major happens before we can, automatic recovery is there to help.
LibreOffice 24.2 enables AutoRecovery by default for new installations. The feature isn’t new but the default setting is. Of you use an older version of LO stop reading and go enable it!
Users of the Notebook bar layout (not enabled by default) will notice lots of buffs, including menu tweaks, better print preview, proper reset of customised layouts, and fewer “jumps” back to the Home tab.
Informative tooltips were added to the “Insert special character drop-down” (the one in the toolbar, not the dialog version accessed from the insert menu). This display character descriptions on hover.
KDE Plasma users will be pleased to hear that, as of this release, the qt5/kf5/VCL plugin LibreOffice UI will automatically switch to dark mode for all UI elements (app, web, and icons) when the dark color scheme is set in the desktop settings.
LibreOffice 24.2 Writer picks up:
- ‘Legal’ ordered list numbering support
- Comments can now be styled to visually differentiate types of comments.
- Improved multi-page floating table support
- Better interoperability with Microsoft Word for Japanese users
- New line break algorithm for interoperability with DOCX (only atm)
LibreOffice 24.1 Impress & Draw apps gain:
- Small caps support (read more about that)
- Presenter Console moved to Slide Show > Slide Show Settings
- Bluetooth Remote control server can be turned on without Wi-Fi server
- Impress template fixes, including using correct fonts for CJK and CTL
- Draw now imports multi-page TIFF files, one image per page
LibreOffice 24.2 Calc adds (pun, sorry):
- Functions sidebar deck now has a search bar
- Scientific number format supported and saved in ODF
- Highlight Row and Column relevant to active cell
Other changes worth knowing about:
- Accessibility buffs to improve using LibreOffice with screen readers
- ‘Save with Password’ prompt now shows a password strength meter
- New password-based ODF encryption is more resistant to brute force
- Search field added to Tools > Options
- Settings to show Security Warnings window as in-app infobars
- More editable metadata fields, including Contributor, Publisher, Rights, Source
- FTP protocol support removed from LibreOffice entirely
- Armenian language support
- Issues accessing Help fixed (thanks Mark)
For more details on the changes above, plus lots more, read the LibreOffice 24.2 release notes. Those are detailed, contain lots of screenshots, and provide links to various bug reports, code commits, and developer blog posts that shine more light on to specific changes.
Microsoft Office Compatibility Fixes
One of the best features in LibreOffice? Interoperability with Microsoft Office documents.
As The Document Foundation note: “progress is so rapid that each new version [of LibreOffice] dramatically improves upon the previous” in this regard — and LibreOffice 24.2 is no exception.
Notably, LibreOffice 24.2 Writer imports ‘drawing canvas’ elements from DOCX documents better, with connectors imported as true connectors, primitive shapes like ellipses imported as OOXML shapes, and supports multicolour gradients, theme colours and glow effects for shapes.
SVG OOXML extension also imports an SVG image (svgBlip element) instead of a fallback PNG, and exports an SVG image in addition to a fallback PNG image for compatibility other older MS Office version; and first page headers/footers in OOXML import in Writer is smarter.
Download LibreOffice 24.2
You can download LibreOffice 24.2 for Windows, macOS, and Linux directly from the LibreOffice website.
If you’re on Ubuntu you may prefer to get this update from the LibreOffice PPA, via Flathub, or from the Canonical Snap Store — though keep in mind that those avenues might not update to the latest release immediately, but it’s rarely more than a day or two post-release.
While the new features in LibreOffice 24.2 are worth upgrading for, don’t feel obligated to if you don’t think you’ll use them. The LibreOffice 7.6 series (including Ubuntu 23.10) is maintained by The Document Foundation and continues to get back-ported fixes.