LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

Mature, stable – and can rescue corrupt files

The second LibreOffice release of 2024 is here, with additional spreadsheet functions, improved presentation layouts, better searching, and more.

LibreOffice 24.8 is the second release under the project's updated version-numbering scheme. Similarly to Ubuntu, from the start of this year, The Document Foundation (TDF) now assigns new releases a year-plus-month tag, rather than a slowly incrementing decimal.

Version 24.2 succeeded last year's version 7.6, and it's still in maintenance. It's up to 24.2.5 now, and is the current stable version, while 24.8 is the fresh new edition.

The Reg FOSS desk likes things minimal, and turns off all the toolbars for a clean uncluttered look

LibreOffice is the continuation of OpenOffice, and took over after OpenOffice 3.2 in 2010. That project is still lumbering along but has only put out four fresh versions since the split, still on version 4.1. TDF passed that number in 2013.

We last looked at LibreOffice this time last year, and this release isn't vastly different – but then, neither are new versions of Microsoft Office these days. The suite began as a word processor for the Amstrad CPC in 1985, so it's had nearly four decades of development.

We practice what we preach around here, and presented at FOSDEM in February using LibreOffice Impress. The Notes pane would have been very handy

The new features page calls out three significant new features. This vulture's personal favorite is the new Notes view in Impress, the presentations component (read: PowerPoint replacement). Now, if you're in the slide sorter, you can toggle an optional pane underneath that shows your text notes for that slide. (We find it helpful to think of the notes as stuff written on the back of the slide, and this way, you can see both sides at once without flipping the slide over.)

For navigating long documents, there's a Quick Find function in the sidebar. When searching, rather than just leaping from one match to the next, this shows a list of all matches and a snippet of the context of each.

The new Find function shows all the occurrences at once, with some context

Spreadsheet users get nine new functions, most of which help querying ranges of cells. Ever since the era of Lotus 1-2-3, people have been using spreadsheets as databases, for the simple reason that they're easier than most database programs. (As a historical footnote, Lotus called their app 1-2-3 because it supported three functions in one program: Numerical spreadsheets, databases, and graphing.)

There's a lot more fresh functionality than this, as the release notes explain over some 35 sections.

At risk of repeating ourselves, it's worth having LibreOffice around, even if you're perfectly happy with Microsoft Office – or indeed with any of its alternatives. We have been using it for decades to recover corrupted MS Office documents, but it has other tricks up its sleeve. It can open and converts formats that Microsoft can't – for instance, if you have been having fun writing in WordStar, or perhaps the revived WordPerfect for Unix, or even banging numbers together in 1-2-3. And if you're still using OpenOffice, it's time: Let it go, and switch to a more modern, faster replacement. ®