LibreOffice 7.3 improves Microsoft Office interoperability

[harlan4096]

The developers of the open source Office suite LibreOffice have released LibreOffice 7.3 to the public on February 2, 2022. The new version improves Microsoft Office interoperability in several meaningful ways.LibreOffice 7.3 is already available for download on the official project website. The office program is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS systems. Existing users may select Help > Check for Updates to download and install the new version. Selecting Help > About LibreOffice displays the current version.

A strong development focus of LibreOffice 7.3 was to strengthen interoperability with Microsoft Office. The new release features improvements in three areas:

• Support for new features such as the tracking of changes in tables and other elements.
  
• Performance improvements when opening certain Office files in LibreOffice.
  
• Import and export filter improvements.
  

The full changelog provides a detailed overview of the changes in the release. Here is a short overview of important changes in LibreOffice 7.3:

• Support for managing changes for tracked deletions and insertions of tables and table rows, as well as basic table changing tracking support improvements, e.g., tracking the insertion of empty table rows.
  
• Tracked text moving: moved text is shown in green color and double-strikethrough or underlines to improve the reviewing process.
  
• Other change tracking improvements, including tracking paragraph style changes.
  
• Improved PDF export performance for complex documents.
  
• Improved the loading of large RTL documents.
  
• Improved rendering speed of certain complex documents.
  
• CSV import and export improvements, including support for new field seperators.
  
• Bash-like auto-complete implemented for Calc autoinput.
  
• Improved the loading of certain XLSM files.
  
• Improved the insertion of large charts.
  
• Added PowerPoint compatible screen sizes to Slide > Slide Properties > Slide > Paper Format.
  
• Support for the generation of one-dimensional barcodes.
  
• Unified borderline widths.
  
• Improved Doc and Docx file format list/numbering import, other importing improvements.
  
• Improved Excel and PowerPoint imports.
  
• Improved the display of spelling and grammar issues on high-resolution screens.
  

Closing Words
 
LibreOffice is improved with every release. Development was focused on improving compatibility with Microsoft Office, and this has been achieved in several meaningful ways in the new version of the Office suite.

Now You: which Office program, if any, do you use?
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