A new version of the popular open-source office suite LibreOffice has been released.
LibreOffice 24.8 continues the enhancements introduced in the LibreOffice 24.2 launch from earlier in the year. This version adheres to the new date-based versioning format, with ’24’ representing the year 2024 and ‘8’ indicating August, the month of release.
Internally, LibreOffice 24.8 integrates six months of progress, including 5591 commits from 171 developers, 115 of whom are volunteers. These contributions span a range of important updates from bug fixes and security improvements to user interface enhancements, new capabilities, and crucial interoperability progress.
Furthermore, this marks the debut of LibreOffice 24.8 on Windows on ARM, extending its accessibility and utility.
No doubt you’re wanting to hear and see more, so read on to swot up on what’s new in LibreOffice 24.8!
LibreOffice 24.8: New features
Creating documents to share with others? LibreOffice 24.8 features a new privacy option you might want to check out.
If Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Security > Options > Remove personal information on saving is enabled, your document will not retain any personal information.
This includes details such as the author name, time stamps, duration of edits, printer details, title of the document template, and all comments metadata.
Moreover, LibreOffice version 24.8 introduces a new password-based encryption feature for ODF files.
According to the developers, this new feature offers enhanced performance, is more tamper-resistant, provides greater resistance against brute force attacks, and conceals metadata to prevent data leaks.
LibreOffice 24.8 Writer scores:
- Improved support for multi-page floating tables
- New Find deck in sidebar to quickly find text plus…
- New Alt + 9 shortcut to open Find deck
- Table alignment and left/right spacing can be adjusted from sidebar
- Comments panel width is now adjustable
- New (optional) formatting aid to enclose selected text with quotes, brackets, etc
- Custom document bullet points now appear in bullet dropdown for reuse
- Improved continuous endnotes for DOCX, DOC & RTF documents
- Assorted buffs to Navigator, including broken image link indicator
- New hyphenation options, including ‘no-break’ context menu action
LibreOffice 24.8 Impress gains:
- New Notes pane option to view notes under slides in Normal mode
- Default live-mode editing in slideshow
- New default templates contributed by the Indonesian community
- New dialog to navigate directly to a specific slide or page in Impress and Draw
- Hitting enter on an empty list item now concludes the list
- Enhanced speed in opening PPTX files containing numerous custom shapes
LibreOffice 24.8 Calc introduces:
- Sheet > Insert Cells feature now supports adding multiple rows or columns simultaneously
- Significantly improved copy-paste functionality between Calc and Google Sheets
- Enhanced performance in threaded calculations
- New functions: FILTER, RANDARRAY, SEQUENCE, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE
- New functions: LET, XLOOKUP, and XMATCH
- AutoFill now accessible through UNO commands for operation without a mouse
- AutoFilter includes a lock checkbox
- Added an option to export sheet ranges
- Enabled case-sensitive data validity
Changes in LibreOffice 24.8 Draw include:
- Support for tiling patterns in imported PDF files
- Hovering over a layer tab highlights the objects it contains
The official release notes for this release offer more information on these and other changes, including links to code commits, bug reports, and even some blog posts taking a deep dive on the technical challenges involved in adding them.
Other changes
LibreOffice 24.8 introduces several notable enhancements to its charts component, which users can apply across all suite tools that support chart functionalities, including Writer.
One key update allows users to format the text within chart titles, text boxes, and shapes via the Character dialog, accessible through multiple routes such as the toolbar. This functionality to stylize text directly within charts has been highly anticipated and is now implemented.
The addition of “Pie-of-Pie” and “Bar-of-Pie” chart types represents another significant update. These new chart forms enable users to focus on and expand a particular segment of a pie chart into a secondary pie or bar chart. This feature is particularly useful for detailed analysis of a specific data subset within a larger dataset.
Enhancements in file format compatibility include a crucial fix ensuring that Writer documents maintain the default page style’s background when saved in DOCX format. Moreover, the suite has enhanced capabilities for importing and exporting OOXML pivot table format definitions.
Get LibreOffice 24.8
While LibreOffice 24.8 represents the latest stable release, it’s not the only edition receiving active support. For those requiring a tested platform and not the most recent features, the LibreOffice 24.2 series remains a great choice, as in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
If, however, you seek the newest advancements, you can grab LibreOffice 24.8 for Windows, macOS, and Linux directly from the LibreOffice website. DEB packages are included for Ubuntu, though ensure to follow the README in the extracted archive for effortless installation.
Are you using Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or another *buntu-based distribution? Consider installing this update via the LibreOffice PPA. Additionally, LibreOffice is officially available on the Canonical Snap Store and Flathub, offering alternative installation options.
Ubuntu will not apply back-porting of this new series to currently supported versions. However, it will be included in Ubuntu 24.10, slated for release in October.