LibreOffice Expert

The brilliant and highly motivated developers of the open source community have created an amazing menagerie of free tools for doing things that computer users around the world used to have to pay for: video editors, photo processors, web browsers, and development platforms. The centerpiece of this ambitious collection is the versatile LibreOffice office suite – an enterprise-ready toolset for composing and managing word-processing documents, databases, spreadsheets, presentations, and much more. LibreOffice runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and, if you don’t already have it, you can download it for free or install it from the DVD attached to this issue. The LibreOffice user interface is very intuitive, and most users just see the edges of it. They start it up and learn what they need to know for a…

LibreOffice Installation Files The DVD attached to this issue includes installation files for setting up the full version of LibreOffice on the following systems: ■ 64-bit Windows ■ 32-bit Windows ■ 64-bit macOS ■ 64-bit macOS (Apple Silicon) ■ 64-bit Linux for deb systems ■ 64-bit Linux for RPM systems Installation packages for the latest version are included in separate files. Consult the documentation for your package manager or see “Introducing LibreOffice” on page 8 of this issue for more on installing LibreOffice. Lots More! As an extra bonus, this DVD also includes a collection of other valuable resources to help you extend and learn about LibreOffice. Look inside for: ■ Handbooks – the complete set of LibreOffice Handbooks with hundreds of pages of help and reference in PDF format…

A complete, feature-rich, privacy-oriented office suite, compatible with Microsoft documents, and totally free – such a thing can’t really exist, right? There must be a catch somewhere! Well, no. There’s no catch, no hidden costs, and no data mining or feeding your documents to some sinister “artificial intelligence engine” (see the “Privacy Minded” box). LibreOffice [1] is indeed a complete suite of office tools, for zero cost, and it doesn’t make money through adverts or selling your data. The reason LibreOffice is free is simple: It’s made by a worldwide community, driven by volunteers who are passionate about high-quality productivity software that’s free for everyone to use. LibreOffice’s goal is to bridge “digital divides,” making powerful tools available to everyone, regardless of their income, location, or language. Indeed, LibreOffice’s user interface…

Back in the 1980s, a word processor was essentially a text editor with some extra features – in other words, a tool for processing your words. Today, however, everyone expects much more from a program like this: rich layout features, high compatibility with other office software, and the ability to structure and navigate complex documents. Writer, LibreOffice’s word processor, is an exceptionally powerful tool with a styles system that really helps to maintain consistency in your documents – but more on that later. First of all, let’s get familiar with the basics! When you launch LibreOffice and choose a new Writer document (or if you’re already running the app, go to File | New | Text Document in the menu), a window (Figure 1) will open with the following features:…

Calc is LibreOffice’s spreadsheet module. The equivalent of Microsoft Excel, Calc is designed to be closely compatible with it. Each Calc worksheet (Figure 1) is capable of handling 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows, more than enough for most purposes. If you need more, or find that a spreadsheet crashes on a memory-challenged machine, consider creating a database in LibreOffice Base. In case you are a complete beginner, spreadsheets like Calc are more or less a sophisticated version of the tables found in text documents. In fact, in LibreOffice Writer, tables can be set up to use a few simple spreadsheet features. Spreadsheet is the name given to a file, and worksheet to the pages within the file. On each worksheet, columns are designated by uppercase letters, and rows by Arabic…

The term “PowerPoint” has become synonymous with presentations in general, even if the file was made in a different program. Presentation software dates back to the early 1980s, with tools such as VCN ExecuVision, which let users add images to text and display them in a slideshow format. LibreOffice’s presentation component is called Impress, and it’s an immensely versatile tool with features and special effects galore. So let’s dive into it! Start LibreOffice and choose a new Presentation (or if you’re already running the app, go to File | New Presentation in the menu). You’ll be presented with a list of preinstalled templates, so choose one you like, and a new Impress document will open displaying the following features: 1. Tab bar: Click on the tabs to switch between different…