LibreOffice 25.2.1, the new major release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD, and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon, and Intel), and Linux, is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/download.
LibreOffice is the best office suite for users who want to maintain control over their individual software and documents, thereby protecting their privacy and digital lives from commercial interference and Big Tech's lock-in strategies.
LibreOffice is the only office suite designed to meet the user's real needs – not just their eyes.
It offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes, optimizing the available space to place the maximum number of functions just one or two clicks away.
It is also the only software for creating documents (which may contain personal or confidential information) that respects the user's privacy, ensuring that the user can decide whether and with whom to share the content they create, thanks to the standardized and open format, and with periodic software updates.
All this with a feature set that is comparable to the leading software on the market and far superior to that of any competitor.
What makes LibreOffice unique is the LibreOffice Technology Platform, the only one on the market that allows for the consistent development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – including those provided by ecosystem companies – capable of producing identical and fully interoperable documents based on the two available ISO standards:
The open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and Microsoft's proprietary OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). The latter hides a huge number of artificial (and unnecessary) complex locking techniques that create problems for users.
End users can receive first-level technical support from volunteers on user mailing lists and the website
Ask Libre Office: https://ask.libreoffice.org.
The LibreOffice Writer manual can be downloaded from the address
https://books.libreoffice.org/en/.
New features in LibreOffice 25.2
PRIVACY
– LibreOffice can remove all personal information associated with any document (author names and timestamps, editing time, printer name and configuration, document template, author and date for comments and tracked changes).
CORE/GENERAL
– LibreOffice 25.2 can read and write ODF version 1.4.
– Many interoperability improvements with proprietary OOXML documents.
– It is now possible to automatically sign documents after defining a default certificate.
– Windows 7 and 8/8.1 are deprecated platforms and support will be removed in version 25.8.
– Python-based extensions and features will not work on Windows 7.
WRITER
– Improvements to change tracking management, to manage large numbers of changes in long documents.
– Comments are now tracked in the navigator when you move focus to comments, while resizing the area containing comments now displays a visual guide.
– Added options to set a default zoom level for opening documents, overriding the level stored in documents.
– It is now possible to delete all content of a content type (except headings) via the Navigator.
CALC
– Added “Handle Duplicate Records” dialog to select/remove duplicate records in Calc.
– Both the Function Wizard dialog and the function sidebar deck received improvements in search and user experience.
– Solver models can be saved to spreadsheets and Solver is able to provide a sensitivity analysis report.
– Added new sheet protection options related to Pivot Tables, Pivot Charts, and AutoFilters.
IMPRESS & DRAW
– Many improvements to all Impress templates, which now have visible elements (font color set to black) in the main notes and handout.
– Objects can be centered on the Impress slide (or Draw page) with a single step.
– Automatic slide repeat can now be enabled in windowed mode.
– Text that overflows in presenter notes is no longer cut off when printing.
USER CONTACT
– The list of recently used files now has a checkbox “[x] Current section only” that allows filtering the list.
– Object boundaries now change independently of formatting marks.
– The color of non-printing characters and the background color of comments can be customized.
– The default items for unordered lists (also known as bullets) have been updated.
– Significant improvements in application issues.
accessibility
– Improved warning and error levels in the accessibility sidebar, with the ability to ignore warnings.
– User interface elements reference an accessible identifier that can be used by assistive technologies.
– Windows: accessibility is enabled whenever a tool requests information about the accessibility level and accessible relationships are reported correctly.
– Linux: positions of UI elements (including Wayland) are correctly referenced to the accessibility level.
SCRIPTFORGE LIBRARIES
– An extensible and robust collection of macro resources that can be called from the user's Basic or Python scripts.
– All services (except where the native built-in functionality is better) are available for Python scripts with identical syntax and behavior as in Basic.
– The English documentation of the ScriptForge libraries is now partially integrated into the LibreOffice help pages.
LibreOffice 25.2 contributors
A total of 176 developers contributed to the new features of LibreOffice 25.2: 47% of the code commits came from 50 developers employed by ecosystem companies – Collabora and allotropia – and other organizations, 31% from seven developers at The Document Foundation, and the remaining 22% from 119 individual volunteer developers.
An additional 189 volunteers committed 771.263 localized strings in 160 languages, representing hundreds of people working on translations. LibreOffice 25.2 is available in 120 languages, more than any other office software, making it available to over 5,5 billion people in their native language. In addition, over 2,4 billion people speak one of these 120 languages as a second language.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
