TDF LibreOffice Document Liberation Project Community Blogs Weblate Nextcloud Redmine Ask LibreOffice Donate

Why LibreOffice? Messaging - Why? in a nutshell

LibreOffice is the most complete Free and Open Source Office Suite
LibreOffice has the fastest growing number of features: Thanks to one of the fastest development pace in the industry. Twice a year a new version is released that ships many new features. Further more many additional releases with improvements and bugfixes are made
LibreOffice is a community powered software: anyone can join and each contribution counts
LibreOffice is one of the fastest growing communities worldwide: It is available in over a hundred different languages
LibreOffice is independent: It is run by the people and for the people through the Document Foundation, its representative entity.
Headquartered in Europe (Berlin), The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project are independent, free from vendor capture and governmental data collection and surveillance.

Features unique for LibreOffice

Below initial list by MM
See full list mentioned here
Features to be found on the various feature pages:
 https://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-3-new-features-and-fixes/
 https://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-4-new-features-and-fixes/
 https://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-5-new-features-and-fixes/
 https://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-6-new-features-and-fixes/
 https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes/

Preparation

LibreOffice - Collection of all new features - & selection to highlight

Work in Progress File:LibreOffice newFeaturesOverview.ods

This file collects all the features mentioned for the various releases.
This counts for over 500 ! items, of which roughly 40-60% (??) will be unique in LibreOffice ..
So the idea is (was) to make this collection a clear overview, simple to search, to choose which to show/highlight.

Page in Silverstripe

Adreas created a sub-page to Features in Silverstripe with the title "Why

LibreOffice?"

Cor likes the two colum table as used in e.g. '3-6-new-features-and-fixes/' best.

Features

filter work

Lots of extra Import filters: Lotus Word Pro, MS Works, Visio (all versions), WordPerfect (all versions), Corel Draw, MS Publisher, MS Word for Mac 5.1, Write Now 4.0, MacWrite Pro 1.5, AppleWorks 6.0

ODF import/export: embed corporate palettes, performance improvements, fast flat-ODF filters, embedding of media files (3.5), font embedding into the document (4.1, improves interoperability)

OOXML import/export improvements: many custom-shapes fixes, smart-art import, ink annotations import, many VML fixes, EMF+ rendering, huge amounts of heavy-lifting bug-fixing work too.

Performance improvements for RTF, DOC, DOCX etc.

UI improvements

Live / interactive word-count in status - bar and/or dialog
New UI / layout dialogs - cleaner & better localisation (4.0)

Font preview (also internationalized) & style preview in the UI
Crisper font rendering

Easy-to-use header / footer insertion in Writer & attractive page-breaks rendered between pages not in-line
Ctrl+F to find in a Firefox-like in-window search-bar

Save-as dialog is less confusing around file formats
Arabic/Indic (Right to Left) support: dozens of fixes

Personas - theme your toolbar: shared with mozilla
Flatter, more modern UI look

Much improved high-quality photo scaling to avoid aliasing
Easier export of graphics and many other improvements in handling (3.6, 4.0)

Fast applying of the last used colour with split colour buttons in Writer and Calc (3.6)

New template manager dialog
Improved presenter console

Writer

Add range comments: comment on a chunk of text not only to a location (4.0)
Different header and footer on the first page without using a separate page style. Also improves interoperabillity. (4.0)

Navigator lets you unfold one heading as usual in a tree view (3.3)
New easy-to-use dialog box for title pages (3.3)

Table AutoFormats records a lot extra properties (3.6)
Lots of work on rendering / layout improvements for interoperabiliy. Too numerous and individually uninteresting to list

Use of Microsoft Word form field documents as intended: with tab
Embedded image / photo rotation now possible (4.1)

Greek and Arabic mode for bullets and numbering (3.4 - and others? later?)

Impress pieces

Android bluetooth remote-control with slide previews & notes install from the google store & play
New Impress master pages + widescreen format support

Photo album slide-deck builder (4.1)
Embedding of media files (3.5)

calc bits

Color scales & data-bars rendered in cells
More border styles (also improves interoperability)

Multi-inline input bar
DataPilot improvements: named ranges and unlimited number of fields and more (3.4)

Auto-filter and sorting: improvemed UI and more options (3.5, 3.6)
Unlimited number of rules for conditional formatting (3.5)

Named ranges can be set per sheet (3.4)
Support for 1000 sheets (3.5)

Improved calc copy/move sheet dialog
Additional sheet protection options (3.3)

More functions in Tab context menu (3.5, 3.6)
More options in the cell context menu (3.6)

Import arbitrary XML files with schema GUI (4.0)
Much improved CSV import (3.3, 3.6)

Date handling improved, more flexible and less intrusive (3.5, 3.6, ..)
Stepped lines / charts (4.1)

Numerous new spreadsheet functions (3.5, 3.6, 4.0, 4.1)
More-familiar default key bindings (3.3)

Math

New symbols (3.5)
Better integration with Help (3.6)
Interactive in-document formula editing (experimental mode, 3.3)

Base

Support of Read-Only database registration (3.3)
Integrated PostgreSQL native driver (3.5)

localisations

We ship 100+ in our default installl

Misc

Single MSI file with everything embedded for Windows installation
CMIS integration: Sharepoint, Alfresco, Nuexo

Built-in lightproof simple proof-reading / grammar checker
Much improved 'label' pages geometry, selection & config.