”Over 60% of code commits for the brand new version […] are focused on interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats,” The Document Foundation say of the update, the first major release since February.

Reading and writing to Microsoft Office file formats, like .docx and .pptx remains a key ask of this open source office suite, and something its millions of users rely on daily. Every entry in LibreOffice suite gains speed improvements with this uplift, with Calc’s opening and scrolling through large .xlsx files a notable highlight.

LibreOffice 7.2 Community, the new major release of the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop productivity, is available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download. Based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity on desktop, mobile and cloud, it provides a large number of interoperability improvements with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats. In addition, LibreOffice 7.2 Community offers numerous performance improvements in handling large files, opening certain DOCX and XLSX files, managing font caching, and opening presentations and drawings that contain large images. There are also drawing speed improvements when using the Skia back-end that was introduced with LibreOffice 7.1.

LibreOffice 7.2 Community is out today as the newest version of this widely-used, open-source, cross-platform office suite.

LibreOffice 7.2 Community (yes, their new branding, rather than the former "Personal Edition" attempt) is the latest feature release with much work on improving interoperability with Microsoft Office file formats. In addition to better handling Microsoft Office files like faster opening of DOCX documents, LibreOffice 7.2 Community brings a command pop-up / heads-up display (HUD), initial GTK4 toolkit support, the ability to compile to WebAssembly, font caching for faster rendering, Calc spreadsheet performance improvements, and dropping its OpenGL-based drawing code in favor of routing all the code through Skia.

LibreOffice continues to be considered the main alternative to Microsoft Office, and the open-source license makes it one very cost-effective product for both home users and businesses.

But on the other hand, one concern when transitioning from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice is document compatibility and interoperability, something that The Document Foundation has been working around the clock on resolving.

The Document Foundation has announced the latest release of LibreOffice...

The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 7.2, the latest version of its free and open-source office productivity suite. Among the changes is a significant number of improvements related to interoperability proprietary Microsoft DOC, and DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX documents.

“LibreOffice 7.2 Community provides a large number of interoperability improvements with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats,” the announcement post reads. “In addition, LibreOffice 7.2 Community offers numerous performance improvements in handling large files, opening certain DOCX and XLSX files, managing font caching, and opening presentations and drawings that contain large images.”

The Document Foundation has announced the launch of LibreOffice 7.2 – a major new release of the office suite that comes with lots of interoperability improvements to better support Microsoft Office formats such as DOCX, DOC, PPTX and XLSX. The new update also adds native support for Apple Silicon, although, it’s recommended that you stick to the older binary types for stability reasons.

LibreOffice 7.2 also comes with several new performance improvements when it comes to opening larger files, opening DOCX and XLSX files, managing font caching, and opening presentations and drawings that contain large images. If you’re using the Skia back-end, which was introduced in LibreOffice 7.1, you’ll also notice drawing speed improvements.

According to The Document Foundation, LibreOffice 7.2 Community’s new features came from 171 contributors with 70% of the code commits coming from just 51 developers employed by Collabora, Red Hat, and allotropia – all of which sit on the TDF’s Advisory Board, and other organisations. The other 30% come from 120 individual volunteers.

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 7.2, including a native build for Apple Silicon though users are warned not to use it "for any critical purpose."

The new release is not a big one for features but is nevertheless notable for a couple of reasons.

First, there is now an official Apple Silicon build which can be found here, though the Foundation said that "because of the early stage of development on this specific platform, binaries are provided but should not be used for any critical purpose."

Second, there has been an effort to further improve compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats, with hundreds of fixes to small details that previously prevented identical rendering.

Both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice use an XML document format. According to the foundation: "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 have a large amount of hidden artificial complexity." The native format of LibreOffice is the rival Open Document (ODF) standard.

The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the release of LibreOffice 7.2, the free and open source alternative to Microsoft Office.

LibreOffice 7.2 arrives six months after TDF released LibreOffice 7.1 with a message urging enterprise users to stop using the free Community version and move to a paid-for LibreOffice Enterprise version with more support options from partners.

TDF, which bills LibreOffice as "free and open source software" (FOSS), is maintaining its position that enterprise organizations should stop free-riding off the volunteer-made community version and that LibreOffice may stagnate like OpenOffice -- the open source office productivity suite that Oracle offloaded to The Apache Foundation in 2011.

The LibreOffice program now offers the final version 7.2 of the LibreOffice community, a volunteer-supported version of the best open source office suite

On its own LibreOffice is a capable piece of software. You can open and edit documents in pretty much the same way you do when you are using Office. LibreOffice has its own [sic] document format known as the Open Document Format which it inherited from its parent Open Office. When you create, open and print documents exclusively in LibreOffice everything is fine. No one can even tell the difference between a hard copy made using LibreOffice and one made using Ms Office.

Life is rarely that simple though. The majority of people out there use Ms Office. Often it is necessary to collaborate and share documents with these people. Ms Office does not support the Open Document Format. Instead, it prefers its own proprietary formats such as .xlsx, .pptx and .docx. This means that more often than not when you create a document using LibreOffice you will need to save it in one of these formats if you want to share it with people using Ms Office.

LibreOffice 7.2 Community updates improvements to interoperability with legacy DOC files, and DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX documents.

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. This causes handling issues with LibreOffice, which defaults to a true open standard format (the OpenDocument Format).

LibreOffice says its developers are tackling these issues.

LibreOffice 7.2, a free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, has been published by the Document Foundation (TDF).

TDF published LibreOffice 7.1 six months ago, with a message asking enterprise customers to upgrade from the free Community edition to the paid-for LibreOffice Enterprise version, which includes more support choices from partners.

TDF, which advertises LibreOffice as “free and open-source software” (FOSS), maintains its position that enterprise organizations should stop free-riding on the community-made version and that LibreOffice can stagnate like OpenOffice, the open-source office productivity series that Oracle has offloaded to The Apache Foundation in 2011.