LibreOffice’s developer, the Document Foundation, announced the release of the 3.5.0 FINAL version of this office productivity suite. New features included in version 3.5.0 include speedier grammar checks, the ability to input multiple lines in the spreadsheet component (Calc), and an improved interface for header and footer functionality in the word processing component (Writer). The office productivity suite’s Draw and Impress components also feature some smaller improvements. Overall, this update delivers on earlier impressions that LibreOffice seeks to quickly move away from the shadow of previous Open Office versions.
3.5.0 marks the third major update for the productivity suite since LibreOffice was officially released in September of 2010. In addition to the improvements listed above 3.5.0 has some features that would bolster earlier impressions that LibreOffice is poised to quickly evolve past its OpenOffice pedigree. These new improvements include a multi-language grammar checker. This checker is supposed to be more accurate and speedier than the previous grammar checker. Another feature that is sure to get some attention is the interactive word count measurement. This window features a realtime update of word count tallies.
In terms of format support, RTF functionality has been completely coded. Microsoft format DOCX files are supported by a filter tweak that sports quite a number of improvements. Spreadsheet users can look forward to increased sheet support. Calc can now handle up to 10000 sheets. This feature improves LibreOffice’s sheet-handling operations. Also helping sheet handling is the ability to set the number of default sheets for new spreadsheet documents. Users can also protect sheets now from the automatic menu for tab context. File importation from other office applications has been improved. Also, users can now apply and use an infinite number of conditional formatting rules and parameters for the auto-filter function.
For users who create presentations using Impress and Draw, LibreOffice sports a new filter for importing Microsoft Visio documents. Drawing has also been improved with new line ends. Importation of Smart Art and custom shapes from PowerPoint has also been improved.