I’ve watched LibreOffice evolve through the years. At first, it was an ungainly workplace suite that struggled to maintain up with the first competitors (MS Workplace). The GUI was baked with an old-school recipe and it could typically go away a foul style in your mouth.
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Nevertheless, over time, LibreOffice has grown into an workplace suite I would not hesitate to advocate to anybody. I notice that everybody wants particular options for his or her workplace suite however in the long run, a very powerful factor is that it really works and makes it attainable to collaborate with others who rely upon or don’t have any selection however to make use of MS Workplace.
For me, a couple of options have helped to make LibreOffice my go-to workplace suite, and listed below are 5 options that needs to be in your radar when you’re seeking to change up your workplace suite.
The start of my novel, “Hell’s Muse.”
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
1. Customizable GUI
It is a very private factor however the potential to customise the GUI to satisfy my particular wants goes effectively past something the competitors can supply. One of many the explanation why that is necessary for me is as a result of I typically use a unique GUI choice for various functions.
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For instance, when writing a novel, I would like the sidebar at all times available as a result of I want fast entry to formatting choices. If I am engaged on a extra conventional doc, I’d go together with the tabbed UI. For spreadsheets, I would like the best UI that I can use, such because the contextual single UI.
LibreOffice makes this attainable, with the power to change between an ordinary toolbar, tabbed, single toolbar, sidebar, tabbed compact, groupedbar compact, and contextual single. You’ll be able to even make adjustments to completely different instruments, which lets you have one UI for Author, one for Calc, and one for Presents.
2. Customizable types
The customizable types characteristic ensures that I can have types precisely the best way I would like them (or how an editor/writer may want them). What I like about this characteristic is that it permits me to get very granular with the types, even to the purpose the place I can outline what fashion comes subsequent, how drop caps are dealt with, transparency, borders, indents & spacing, textual content circulation, font, place, highlights, far more.
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I primarily use this characteristic for writing fiction as a result of it means I can fear much less about having to manually format issues and simply write. Anybody who’s ever written something lengthy type understands that staying within the circulation is not nearly effectivity however protecting your practice of thought operating easily and customizable types make this attainable.
3. No AI
Some workplace suites have been slowly including artificial intelligence (AI) to the characteristic record. With MS Workplace you will have Copilot and Apple will probably be infusing iWork with AI as effectively.
Personally, I would relatively AI maintain its mitts off my writing. I’ve spent over 30 years creating my author’s voice and I might be dismissing that tough work by choosing a shortcut. Most fiction authors really feel the identical approach and would relatively maintain AI out of the combination.
Fortunately, LibreOffice does that very factor with no indication it is going to be including AI any time quickly. Even the Grammarly desktop app does not work together with LibreOffice and I’m completely okay with that.
4. MS Workplace compatibility
There isn’t any approach round this. MS Workplace continues to be the de facto commonplace workplace suite, particularly for companies. For some time, I used to be writing all the things in Google Docs; that’s, till one in all my editors complained of incompatibility points (even when exporting to the .docx format with Docs). As soon as I switched from Google Docs to LibreOffice (for my fiction writing), these points all went away.
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Now, my writer’s editor (who strictly makes use of MS Workplace) does not have a single downside with any doc I ship her approach. LibreOffice won’t have excellent 1:1 compatibility with MS Workplace, nevertheless it’s about as shut as I’ve seen, and (no less than for me) that is ok.
5. Doc export
LibreOffice doc export lets you export your Author paperwork to XHTML, PDF, EPUB, MediaWiki, Author Indexing Export XML, JPEG, Author Structure XML, PNG, and WEBP. It’s also possible to save as ODF, ODF Template, Flat XML, Unified Workplace Format, Phrase 2010-365, Phrase 2007, Phrase 2007 Template, Phrase 2003 XML, Wealthy Textual content, Phrase 97-2003, and different sorts. If there is a format you want, greater than possible LibreOffice can export it.
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Typically after I have to export a guide manuscript to EPUB to confirm the formatting, it really works completely. I can even ask what model of MS Workplace a collaborator is utilizing and ensure to export it to essentially the most appropriate model. Not each workplace suite can do this and LibreOffice makes it very simple.
If you would like to give LibreOffice a try, you may set up it on Linux, MacOS, and Home windows. Obtain the model you want from the official LibreOffice site. As at all times, LibreOffice is open-source and free to make use of.