LibreOffice 6.0 released

The Document Foundation released LibreOffice 6.0 Final, a new version of the free and open source Office suite, for all supported operating systems yesterday.

The new version of the application is available for all supported desktop operating system -- Linux, Mac OS and Windows -- and as a cloud version.

The new version of the Office program does not support Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Mac OS 10.8 anymore. LibreOffice 6.0 requires at least Windows 7 Service Pack 1 on Windows machines and Mac OS 10.9 on Mac OS systems.

LibreOffice 6.0 comes with a big list of changes and improvements that improve interoperability, security, core apps and the help system.

LibreOffice 6.0

Here is an overview of important changes in LibreOffice 6.0

• LibreOffice 6.0 supports OpenPGP document signing and encryption as a major new feature on all desktop editions. Users may use OpenPGP to sign ODF documents and an (experimental) option to use OpenPGP to encrypt documents as well.
• Writer: rotate images to any angle.
• Writer: new default table style.
• Writer: support for "Grammar By" spell checking which improves how new words are added to a dictionary by associating it with an existing word so that LibreOffice will recognize the new word with affixes or in compounds as well.
• Calc: support for unformatted text pasting that preserves line breaks and tabs across multiple cells.
• Calc: new spreadsheet functions SEARCHB, FINDB and REPLACEB
• Calc: number of available rows in Online Calc increased to 0.5 million
• General: support for user icon themes via extension manager
• General: new fonts (Noto fonts, open source Hebrew fonts, open source Arabic fonts)
• General: option to save the original or modified image.
• General: redesigned visualization of table borders.
• LibreOffice Help: new Help system online that replaced the old wikihelp system. Responsive design supported so that mobile access is improved.
• Filters: new or improved filters
• Dialogs: special characters dialog improvements featuring a search field, a list of recent and favorite characters, and more.
• Dialogs: The Customize interface comes with a revamped improved interface featuring a two-pane display mode, a search box and other improvements.
• Notebookbar: new variants available.
• Performance: Menu and toolbar show up before the document is loaded.
• Android: added function to create new documents and to insert pictures.

The official blog post is a good starting point to find out what is new in the new version of the Office program. A full list of all changes is in the Release Notes.

The Document Foundation released a short video that highlights important changes as well.