LibreOffice 7.2 released
The latest version of the venerable office suite is now available. Will more businesses choose to use it?
LibreOffice has reached version 7.2, and it comes at an interesting time for the office suite. Over the course of the pandemic, many people have found themselves working from home, and the prospect of shelling out for a Microsoft Office licence (or Office 365
subscription) was an unappealing one.
This should have been an open goal for
LibreOffice, but many organisations are sticking with Microsoft’s offering, while Google Docs
appears to be the free alternative of choice, despite its limitations (and taste for telemetry).
LibreOffice 7.2 is the ideal opportunity for the Document Foundation to get its office suite in front of new people. Perhaps the biggest feature that can help with this is improved compatibility with Microsoft Office, to ensure that Office XML files can be opened in LibreOffice as accurately as possible. As such, there is now improved interoperability with .docx, .xlsx, .pptx and older . doc files. As the Document Foundation points out in its release announcement (see https://bit.ly/ lxf281libreoffice), “Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format deprecated by the ISO in April 2008, and not on the ISO approved standard, so they embed a large amount of hidden artificial complexity.” Much work has gone in to making it work with LibreOffice’s Open Document (ODF) standard, but being able to open Office files, this could help to move more people over to LibreOffice.
Version 7.2 also comes with a build for Macs running ARM-based M1 chips. However, the Foundation warns that “because of the early stage of development on this specific platform, binaries are provided but should not be used for any critical purpose.” Still, it’s another positive step that could win over new converts. To download LibreOffice 7.2, visit https://bit.ly/ lxf281libreofficedownload.