LibreOffice 7.4 Has Been Released: Here's What You Should Know

The LibreOffice 7.4 update is here with numerous improvements for users to try.

The most recent version of LibreOffice, 7.4, includes regular updates to the core modules, such as Calc, Writer, and Impress, which add new features and improve existing ones.

LibreOffice is one of the most popular open-source software out there. This project is also known in the space to be one that provides a better experience in each update it rolls out.

In this current version, compatibility with MS Office was significantly enhanced in the software along with changes to the core filters.

LibreOffice Update

LibreOffice 7.4 is the fourth major update to the seventh version of the software.

Its primary objective is to enhance the project's interoperability and compatibility with the proprietary document formats used by Microsoft Office.

According to BleepingComputer, the most recent release is a result of efforts put in by members of a worldwide community of volunteer contributors in addition to developers from the organizations TDF (The Document Foundation), Collabora, and RedHat.

Individually, 147 people worked on LibreOffice 7.4 and made 658,000 changes. These individuals were joined by a team of 528 volunteers who offered extensive localization options to support the program's documentation.

LibreOffice 7.4 is available in 120 languages and supports different architectures such as Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems. It is reported that the version 7.4 brings dramatic changes compared to its previous version, the 7.3.

LibreOffice 7.4 New Features

According to LibreOffice, this version might have a few bugs that are frustrating to users, but those bugs will be fixed in the subsequent versions that are designated for bug fixes.

With that, here are a few of the updates and improvements that will be available in the LibreOffice 7.4 version according to its release notes.

New Features for Writer

• This update brought in border improvements for tables and paragraphs that makes it more compatible for Word.

• The software now supports clearing breaks, and improved footnote deletion and insertion.

• It now supports checkbox content controls, rich text, picture, dropdown, and date content controls.

• Writer also has a grammar checker called Language Tool.

• It can now autocorrect markups like italics and bold switched off by default.

• The location of the glyphs has been improved, and various kerning issues as well as unwanted character movement have been addressed.

• Include new settings for optional hyphenation, which can be used to modify the flow of text at the paragraph level.

New Features for Calc

• In the drop-down autosum widget located on the Formula bar, the functions COUNTA, PRODUCT, STDEV, STDEVP, VAR, and VARP have been added.

• Enhance the dialogue for moving and copying sheets.

• Improve the readability of long decimal numbers by formatting them as 0.000"-"000"-"000."

• Recalculation is sped up in some documents that contain a lot of formulas.

• The speed at which a massive CSV file could be opened was sped up.

• Excel's export filter has seen performance improvements.

• Performance enhancements have been made when loading spreadsheets that need to be recalculated.

New Features for Impress & Draw

• The beginning of the document themes in Impress is a blog post shaped like text.

• In addition, support for shape fill was added in the document themes section of the Impress blog post.

• PPTX interoperability requires that the use of slide background as shape fill be supported.