Introduction
I want to begin by saying that I have not uninstalled LO, I want to keep using it and I believe in its future. Nevertheless, after several months of trying very hard to use it as a serious platform to write a paper, I ended up giving up and switching to Microsoft Office where I could finish my paper without issues. I took a few notes that I wanted to share with everyone else and specially with the team, with hopes that some of these issues can be addressed in the near future. Furthermore, I also briefly tried to use Impress as a substitute to PowerPoint but I gave up much faster because it truly was a much less refined experience and severely limited my work. For this reason, my feedback for Impress is much more limited.
The version I used while collecting this feedback was 26.2.6

LibreOffice - Writer

• The Track Changes tool is underdeveloped. After accepting / rejecting one change, it did not seem to automatically jump to the next edit in line, instead, it jumped to the next edit done in time which might not be the one following immediately after in the text. Both options should be available and switchable with an easy to find toggle, with "position in text" probably selected by default. Furthermore, the option to hide resolved comments was not fully working. Indeed, resolved comments would reappear every time you "undo" the text, forcing you to re-hide the comments that you resolved. Finally, some edits would be shown as plain text even if "track changes" was selected.
• Cross-compatibility with MS Office is still bad (using .odt). Figures would disappear. I found a workaround based on using .png images instead of .pdf but that did also not work consistently and some figures would disappear nonetheless when the document would be opened in MS Office.
• I use Zotero as a citation manager. The iteration of the manager / plugin that I used was quite bad and clunky, however, I assume that this is on Zotero's side and not LO. For comparison, the performance of Mendeley citation manager was significantly better, and the plugin was better integrated.
• Themes don't apply well and some options did not appear to have any effects regardless if they were toggled or not. In my case, even when changing to light themes, certain icons remained as the system default (dark).
• LibreOffice has a huge amount of options and customisation. It really is impressive but navigating the menus and sub-menus of Writer is a nightmare unless you know where to look. Furthermore, information online is sometimes outdated, leading you nowhere. For this reason, I think that LO should follow on the path of MS Office and include a search bar where keywords can be typed to find the desired option (e. g. I should be able to type "themes" or "appearance" or "customisation" and find the right option).
• I do not know where to find the option to change the size of icons in my toolbar. This was an option before, but the information online is outdated.
• DPI integration is really bad. Even if icon size could be editable, not all the interface scales well. The most egregious example are the boxes for font and / or style. Their size remains unmodified and does not scale at all (tested only when trying to reduce the size of icons).
• Figures and footnotes: The current (or now, past) iteration of this is also quite terrible. When a new figure is added, it creates an invisible frame that hard-caps the caption attached to the figure, meaning that if the figure is thinner than the width of the text, the caption will also be thinner. As far as I know, there is no way to modify the width of this "frame" without being forced to resize the figure. Furthermore, if figure captions are a bit on the longer end, the text will become hidden behind the figure frame, showing only a small, right-pointing arrow that can be clicked on or expanded. The frame can be vertically resized, nevertheless, this resize isn't saved and resets every time that the document is opened. This is a very serious drawback and one of the main reasons that ultimately forced me to drop LO altogether, I can't emphasise enough how bad is the issue with this system of "embedded frame" for figures, and what a terrible headache it is to work with.
• Figure positioning options are confusing, even when reading the documentation it is hard to understand what is intended to do what. Furthermore, they are also prone to breaking and acting erratically.
• Cross-references break all the time and showcase an "Error!..." message within the text. The worse part is that you can't search for "Error!", they seem to be invisible to the search tool and it won't show up despite being in the text.
• When creating a new label, it is currently impossible to use a space between two words (e.g. "Supplementary Figure"). Instead, you are forced to use underscores, which is unacceptable in final format documents.
• The bullet point system is also underdeveloped. In the version I tested, it could not be easily modified / edited. Bullet point sizes are hard or impossible to edit. Another example is combining bullet point styles: it is currently impossible to create a system that would allow the user to have bullet points, to number sub-points, or letters to number sub-points.
• Unfortunately, it still feels slower and clunkier than MS Office Word, specially when using heavy documents with many pages and images.
• There seems to be issues with styles, not applying correctly, or, if a certain style is edited, not updating the text that has that given style. However, I did not experiment a lot with this so I don't have much more feedback.
• The Search / Replace tool is currently inferior to that of MS Office Word. It is more intrusive and it is difficult to go from search to search&replace. The list of found words (with small bits of context) shown on the left pop-up column from MS Office Word Search tool is good and missing in LO Writer. Other great examples of how to apply a good Search&Replace tool can be found in Notepad++ or Rstudio.
• Save As could include a .pdf option. I should not have to navigate all the way to export to save as .pdf which is the gold standard format for many documents. This is an issue in many other text editors and something that could make LO stand out.
• It is impossible to change the font of a text if it is in a font that is not installed in the machine. Selecting it and changing the font does nothing and the text remains in the uninstalled font. I am unsure if this is a bug or a feature, perhaps LO Writer could offer a pop up warning that the font you are about to change will be lost and you won't be able to switch back to that font because it is not installed in the system.

Impress Feedback

• The options to change the background are very limited and it is very difficult to customise. You can't crop the picture, can't resize it, can't change its transparency or do any sort of modification to it. There is also no option to "Set to all slide" or "set to current slide only" or "set to slides [X]" (so, not just all or current, but let's say slides 4,8 & 16, for example).
• The option to modify the transparency of text boxes is often used in presentations but difficult to find in Impress (it's not part of background colour, I think it was in "area" options). Finally, even when I found it and tried changing the transparency, it did not work.
• There isn't an "apply" option for styles (edit>styles). That means that when testing different styles, you can't quickly switch from one to another. Instead, they all have to be approved, the textbox will close and then you have to re-navigate and reopen the menu each time. This makes the process of style editing painfully slow. There must be an option to preview the style or apply it without closing the editing window.

Unfortunately I couldn't continue trying to make impress work because it was too time consuming. The impossibility to easily edit text boxes was the deal breaker but there might be other important features worth highlighting that I have missed because of my limited experience with it.

General feedback

• If my cursor is placed anywhere in the last row of a paragraph and I press "arrow down", the editing point should travel to the end of that row (as if I was pressing "End". It currently stays in the same place, unaffected.

Is libreoffice.org having issues? Downloads are coming in at .1 mb a second and I'm getting 504 gateway timeouts when trying to see the mirror list.

i have libreoffice 24.2.7.2 installed currently, running on linux mint 22.3 , and i am trying to update it to the latest version. it says on the help pages that there should be a button in the help menu to check for updates, however there is not one. trying to download from the is also seemingly not working as it either displays that i am unable to connect, or just loads indefinitely on a white screen. not really sure what im doing wrong but i am at my wits end

I have tried this a few times and it always leads to a crash in LibreOffice - Calc.

I have a short list of email addresses that contain doubles and I want to get rid of them quickly. The way I am used of doing is select that list, create a pivot table with the addresses as the selection, row fields = addresses, data field = count of addresses but after selecting the count and clicking OK, LibreOffice crashes. I have restarted LibreOffice, rebooted my laptop but nothing helps.

I tried it on another sheet with a list of cities where I wanted a count of each item: same thing, crashing!! Interestingly enough on an old spreadsheet where the pivot table is established, I can change the list with the cities and the counts are calculated correctly. Bug?

I absolutely love Calc but don't get how lambdas and the usual VBA stylings from Excel could be copied over. Just so I don't spin wheels, does anyone know if this can be done?

when i open print dailogue box the option to specify which pages is grayed out , why?

In both France French and Canada French, typing " (straight quote) autocorrects to « (angle quote) plus a non-breaking space. I could turn the replacement off completely in autocorrect options, but I want it to autocorrect to “ (smart quote) like in English. I should be able to do that by changing the replacement character to « (angle quote), but the problem is that it is already “ (smart quote), even though it autocorrects to « (angle quote). Basically, I can't change it to “ (smart quote). Is that fixable on my end?

In addition, there's a known bug (in the link) in which typing << (two less-thans) autocorrects to “ (smart quote) when it should autocorrect to « (angle quote). So I guess I'll type “ (smart quote) that way, though I'd prefer if it worked the way it'd be expected to. Wonder if these two issues are related, as well..

I want to remove this hotkey but I can't see an option to do it. I want to stop accidentally closing documents.

I noticed the spell checker isn' working anymore. If I try to manually run it I get an error saying "No dictionary available". If I go into the spellchecker options I can choose "Get more dictionaries online." Which I did, I re-downloaded the US English dictionary and it worked fine for a day.

But now today, the same issue re-occurs. I try to run spellcheck, get the error, but now when I go to 'get more online' it shows it as already downloaded. Everything seems to be turned on and ticked the right way, I've not changed any settings, so I'm kind of at a loss.

Anyone else experiencing the same or know a fix? Appreciate the help.

Can't Remember which option eliminates the gray shading from the page and page count numbers in Writer. LO 26.8.0.3 (X86_64) Please remind me.

I have LibreOffice installed, but barely use it. Log on today to find that markdown files are now defaulting to LibreOffice, where they used to default to another program.

Not just that, but .docx and other Office files have been changed as well. I haven't even OPENED LibreOffice in the time when this happened. Apparently it must have had an update, and just decided to do me the favor of reworking my app settings.

LibreOffice markets itself as an alternative to Microsoft Office and its intrusive practices, and then it does crap like this. 🙄🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Hello, all!

I work on a ship (hello from the middle of the North Pacific!) and am trying to use a spreadsheet to automate calculations for the amount of water in our ballast tanks. I'm nearly there but there's one devilish interpolation I'd like to automate. I have figured out one way to do it, but it is cumbersome. Perhaps another mind out there can offer insight.

Here is the situation: we sound the tanks (put a measuring stick and read how deep the water is), and that corresponds to a certain volume/mass of liquid. That part is done. However, there is a series of small corrections to make based on the trim (that's how far down by the bow or stern we are) and heel (how far we're leaning to the port or starboard side because of our load) conditions.

Stated another way, the tables equating the sounding depth with the volume/tonnage of liquid assume we're on an even keel. But often, our stern (or bow) may be deeper for one reason or another. Additionally, we could have a list to either side. In such cases, the values in the tables need to be modified to be accurate.

The screenshots show a section of these "Heel / Trim Corrections Tables". As an example:
- The white background shows one *subset* of corrections.
- The blue background shows columns corresponding to Trim - further to the right, the stern sits deeper than the bow
- The orange background shows rows corresponding to Heel - the middle row is an even keel, and above and below, the ship is leaning to one side or another.

The values are only for certain intervals. They need to be interpolated in both directions in case Trim and Heel fall between the given integers heading the columns/rows.

The trouble is this: there is a data subset (i.e., the white background), for every meter of soundings (in each of 19 tanks), because the tanks are random shapes and the correction values will not be uniform.

So, if the *Sounding* - the light green backgrounds running down the left side of the screenshots - falls between whole numbers (and it will)... then the doubly-interpolated correction value from the subset *below* the sounding needs to be interpolated with a doubly-interpolated correction value from the subset *above* the sounding. For an example, see the second screenshot:

- Assuming a Sounding of 3.50 meters,
- We need to pull data from the dark green background subset, which is for 3.00 meters.
- We also need to pull data from the brown background subset, which is for 4.00 meters.
- The results from each of those tables need to be interpolated, as the answer will lie halfway between the 3.00m and 4.00m results.

- But those results are *each* the result of two more interpolations: for Trim and Heel, within each subset.

Make sense so far? :)

I can definitely do this the long way: creating Heel/Trim interpolation calculations for each subset of data, and then making the spreadsheet interpolate those results when it's given a Sounding value. But there may be a way to do this by nesting commands, or organizing the data differently. I'm not sure.

If anyone out there likes a challenge as much as I do, your input is appreciated! No worries, we can still do this the old-fashioned way, and we're not in any apparent danger of capsizing. 👍
Thank you for reading this far! :)
FLOT

I have an old wordperfect 7/8 presntations graphic (.wpg) that I would like to open and edit in LO. I still have the old WP8 installed where I can open the wpg. Is there any format that WP can save the graphic in, so that I can work on it in LO?

I'm trynna make a spreadsheet of a show I enjoy, and I want to have categories for primary/secondary/teriary characters and locations. Because the total number of characters in each category would vary wildly I would like to have the respective columns use a dropdown but instead of using a dropdown for an exclusive value I would like to be able to input multiple values. Maybe there's a kind of dropdown that has checkboxes? Or a way of implementing the dropdown that simply appends the selected value to the cell data?

I've gotten as far as making a generic drop down, but all the search terms I can think of just return more generic drop down info.

I'm also open to libreoffice calc not being the right answer for this. I know libreoffice base also exists, but I similarly couldn't find a way to have one cell take multiple preset data points. If anyone knows of any other databasing tools that would be better suited that run on linux I would be open to hear of them too.

Edited for version info:

Version: 26.8.0.3 (X86_64) Build ID: bce0998afefdbc355585ca324285661a2170ba77 CPU threads: 12; OS: Linux 7.1; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3 Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US Flatpak Calc: threaded

I just downloaded libre office on my mac from the app store to build an inventory database for my business. I have set up the database and am trying to create a table. There are three options in the task section

Create table

Use wizard to create table

Create view

The 'create table' and 'create view' options will open up a new window to work in. But when I click on the 'use wizard to create table' option nothing happens. When I set up the table I did check that option so I don't know why it isn't working.

Any help on getting that option to open would be great.

*edit
I ended up uninstalling the version from the App Store and going straight to the website and downloaded it from there. That’s when I saw the pop up about needing Java. For some reason the pop up doesn’t happen when you download it from the app store.

I got the correct java version downloaded and it’s working just fine! Thanks yall!!

I genuinely cannot stand how Libre looks, the icons give me a migraine and find myself wishing Office 2010 and Office 2003 didn't' conflict with each other so I could keep both on my PC. Is there anyway to accomplish a UI like this in Libre? None of the icon types I've been able to choose from in Libre are pleasing to my eye.

I wanted to test the daily AppImage, but after generating and trying to launch it, I got this error CPU ISA level is lower than required,

I used antoniofaccioli script without any problem, but now it fails to generate a running AppImage for my laptops.

NB: native LO 26.8 from Arch is running fine without any error.

In LibreOffice impress I am copy-pasting quotes, titles and links of websites into my presentation, but almost every time I paste something, the font size gets changed, and sometimes it also becomes bold and I have no idea why.

How can I make things not change their font style when I paste things into my presentation?

LibreOffice Info:

Version: 24.2.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 420(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 7.0; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:24.2.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.6
Calc: threaded

I am using the .odp file format.

I've always used either English or French for years. This suddenly just comes up.

Currently on the latest build of Windows 10 and have been experiencing my whole screen flickering when interacting with Writer. Writer is what I use mainly so I'm not sure if the rest of the suite may have this issue.

I fixed it by checking on "Force Skia software rendering" in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View.

Posting for anyone searching around to find a fix. Hope this helps somebody.

Version #: 26.2.4.2