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LibreOffice 7.4: Top New Features and Release Details
This video contains the top new features of LibreOffice 7.4 (upcoming) across Writer,
Calc, Impress and other core modules.
The LibreOffice team improves the famous free and open-source office product with each iteration.
Perhaps the only stable and well-managed open-source project as a replacement to Microsoft Office.
The LibreOffice 7.4 version (planned in August), bringing regular updates to core modules including
Calc, Writer and Impress with features and enhancements.
Furthermore, in this release, the compatibility with Microsoft Office improved with changes
to the core filters and platform updates.
Before we round up the new features, here’s a tentative schedule for LibreOffice 7.4:
Schedule Milestone Release Date
Alpha 1 May 9, 2022 – May 15, 2022 Feature Freeze Jun 6, 2022 – Jun 12, 2022
Beta 1 Jun 6, 2022 – Jun 12, 2022 RC1 Jul 4, 2022 – Jul 10, 2022
RC2 Jul 25, 2022 – Jul 31, 2022 RC3 Aug 8, 2022 – Aug 14, 2022
Release 7.4 Aug 15, 2022 – Aug 21, 2022
LibreOffice 7.4 Features
Calc First and foremost, the most crucial change
coming in 7.4 is the support of 16k columns in LibreOffice Calc.
It was available in earlier LibreOffice 7.3 but hidden as an experimental option.
Finally, it is open to support 16384 columns, i.e. up to XFD.
Additional columns are going to help several high-volume data work.
Second, the Autosum button gets the following additional functions to improve productivity
and save time.
COUNTA PRODUCT
STDEV STDEVP
VAR VARP
Moreover, the height of the formula bar is now part of the *.ods files.
Hence, you can see the height retained after saving the file and opening it.
Earlier, it was being reset to the default height.
It is one of the small changes but has a more significant impact on heavy Calc users.
In addition, a new menu option Sheet > Navigate > Go to Sheet shows an entire new dialog which
is similar to the Writer’s Go to Page.
Writer Firstly, the hyphenation settings get three
new options.
You can now specify the size of the hyphenation zone, minimum word length and ability to stop
hyphenating the last word.
Secondly, the menu item Tools > Update > Update now updates the preview of all OLE objects.
Also, if you are importing a DOCX file in LibreOffice 7.4, the paragraph borders bring
more clarity.
In addition, the import also improves the Rich text and checkbox contents inside the
text box for DOCX imports.
Moreover, Write 7.4 now supports clearing breaks from Word files improving layout consistency.
Secondly, the menu item Tools > Update > Update all now updates the preview of all OLE objects.
Also, if you are importing a DOCX file in LibreOffice 7.4, the paragraph borders bring
more clarity.
In addition, the import also improves the Rich text and checkbox contents inside the
text box for DOCX imports.
Moreover, Writer 7.4 now supports clearing breaks from Word files improving layout consistency.
Impress The significant change in Impress is a new
Theme tab in the Slide properties for the master slide.
It contains several accent colour options which control all the sildes in your presentation.
It will be a really neat feature in this version.
Common Updates (across all modules) Firstly, the most important change as a standard
feature is LibreOffice now supports WEBP images officially.
You can directly export and import WebP images across Writer, Calc, Draw etc.
Now you do not need additional software to convert WEBP images, especially in Linux systems.
Moreover, the support for Windows compressed enhanced meta file (EMZ/WMZ) also lands in
this release.
Secondly, the Fille > Recent Documents can remember the state of the last opened document,
whether it was read-only or editable.
The 3D shapes lighting gets some bug fixes and corrections corresponding to the ODF specifications.
Performance Updates A bunch of performance boosts also makes this
an important release of LibreOffice.
Here’s a quick recap of the performance boosts.
The Text Layout performance gets around a 60% boost
Calc formula re-calculation Improved performance of VLOOKUP, COUNTIF and
SUMIF And CSV file import
That’s not all.
LibreOffice 7.4 also brings a huge set of filters (export and import) for Microsoft
Office 365 file types, extended PDF export options (such as a sign) via command line,
updated language support and API changes.
Download LibreOffice 7.4 for Testing You can download the development version of
LibreOffice 7.4 using the respective links and help to test.
RPM Package for Fedora and related distributions DEB packages for Ubuntu, Linux Mint and others
Windows 10, 11 – 64-bit macOS 64 bit
Mac OS X – ARM and Apple SIlicon, M1 If you need assistance, you can refer to our
guide here to install the development version in Linux.
Make sure to report any issues or bugs in the official bug tracker.
LibreOffice 7.4 is planned for release between Aug 15, 2022, and Aug 21, 2022.
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