LibreOffice Release Notes

Writer

• Anchored objects are no longer selected after pasting. The old behaviour can be restored by setting the expert option Office::Writer::Cursor::Option::SelectPastedAnchoredObject to true. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) tdf#167833
• Floating tables and the keep-with-next/don't split paragraph attributes now work better together in Writer (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Change tracking: old direct format of format redlines are now preserved for ODT and are improved for DOCX (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Change tracking: it is now possible to decide which change to accept for interdependent changes (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Floating tables can now be split into floating tables, which improves DOCX export. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) fc53ab8e
• When changing one numbered list by joining it to a previous one (Add to list), this now helpfully also removes any "Restart numbering" properties. (Justin Luth) tdf#113213
• Spell checking dialog: various papercut fixes. Correct-All list no longer cleared unnecessarily (and more reliably cleared when switching to another application). (Justin Luth) tdf#191558 tdf#126826
• Record Track Changes: Partly-deleted paragraphs added to the hidden list. In this way, track changes for partly-deleted paragraphs will not be displayed in the numbering list. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#157596
• Writer now takes line spacing into account for field shadings. In this way, bottom of some letters (e.g. "Ç", "ş", "g", "p") will not be cut off because of the "field shadings" background layer. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#167527
• Do not show line numbering in footnote during DOCX import. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#167202
• Pasting a single image from the clipboard now automatically inserts a caption, following the Writer AutoCaption Images configuration setting. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) d072b5e0
• Writer now supports Start and End paragraph alignment. These options align paragraphs relative to the paragraph text direction, and can simplify reusing styles across languages and writing systems. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#118350

Start and End paragraph alignment

• Writer can now automatically set the direction of RTL text while typing. This behavior can be added to a paragraph style by checking the "Automatically set direction" option in the alignment tab of the paragraph dialog. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#162120
• Writer now displays a more visible grid, and the Snap to Grid functionality now accurately aligns objects with the grid. (Tamás Zolnai) tdf#89544 tdf#126493

Writer grid before/after

• Option to prevent dragging of selected text per Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Writer ▸ Formatting Aids: Drag 'n Drop: ☑ Allow text to be dragged and dropped (Heiko Tietze, tdf) tdf#100998

Calc

• Calc now supports xmlMaps.xml. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#167689
• Improvements to the Sort dialog options. (Regina Henschel)
  • When natural sort is enabled in the Sort dialog options, you have an additional choice to treat decimal separators as regular characters. That allows to sort IP addresses, for example, even if your locale has a dot as decimal separator. The fact that natural sort is enabled is now written to the file and thus retained when reopening the file. tdf#161949
  • The locale setting in the options of the Sort dialog is now written to the file and thus retained. Setting the locale affects not only the choice of a special sort algorithm but now it affects other locale dependent sorting properties too, e.g. which character is used as decimal separator for natural sort. tdf#168175.

Sort options improvements

• Support for Biff12 (Excel 2007+) clipboard format was added, removing limitations of the amount of data pasted into Calc from Excel. (Laurent Balland) (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#127675
• Excel 2010+ was made the default format when saving as XLSX. It was renamed from 'Office Open XML Spreadsheet' to 'Excel 2010–365 Spreadsheet'. (Justin Luth, Collabora) tdf#165180
• Modifying a formula to Matrix mode can now simply be done by F2, ⇧ Shift + Ctrl + ↵ Enter. No need to change formula itself. (Laurent Balland) tdf#104888
• The commands to set the font and the background color (.uno:Color/uno:BackgroundColor) apply the actual setting from the color picker, when assigned to a shortcut. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#138722, tdf#169812
• Expert option Office::Calc::Content::Display::NoteTransparency allows users to switch off transparency for comments. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#169504
• Column titles don't overlap anymore when column widths are small. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#168092

Column title before/after

Performance

• Scrolling speed was improved when a spreadsheet has many hidden columns (Caolán McNamara, Collabora) tdf#156297
• Spreadsheets with lots of shapes are now faster to work with. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#154913
• Removal of duplicate entries is now faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#166121
• Reject tracked changes is faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#133557
• Exporting SVGs with lots of bitmaps was optimized. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#169532

Impress

• Introduced Microsoft Media Foundation APIs on Windows to support video and audio playback of common codecs. Managing video playback with MFPlay. About the supported video and audio file formats (without any additional installed codec), more information can be found on this link. (Balazs Varga, Collabora) tdf#62408 tdf#105168 tdf#159292

Base

• Base is now truly multi-user. (Pierre Vacher) tdf#167960

Chart

• Hovering with the mouse over Chart data range colour palette entries in the Sidebar now shows a live preview in the active chart. (Marco Cecchetti, Collabora) 25fa7051

Sidebar Color Palette for Data Series

• Some OOXML chart style content now round-trips through LibreOffice (OOXML -> LO -> OOXML) successfully. For now this is incomplete, and the style data is neither available nor modifiable in the user interface. (Kurt Nordback, Collabora) tdf#168472

Performance

• Performance issues with 3D charts were fixed. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#148988

Core / General

• Added connector support for Writer and Calc. The object path in the standard toolbar: Insert ▸ Shape ▸ Connectors. The object path in the tabbed user interface: Insert ▸ Connectors (double click for multi-selection). (Amin Irgaliev, Vladislav Tarakanov) tdf#79356

Connectors in Calc spreadsheets

• Fonts for which the license disallows editing, which are embedded in documents, are now supported. Previously, they were silently ignored, and the documents were displayed using substitute fonts. Now the user is asked if they want to open the document in edit mode (without the said fonts), or in read-only mode (with the fonts used for display). ODF and OOXML file formats are supported. (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#145967
• Google Drive authentication was improved to use normal browser method (Windows only for now). (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#101630
• PDF export: handle document external links. (Floris Bos; Olivier Hallot, TDF) tdf#167490 tdf#170309

External links on PDF export

Filters

Generic XML and JSON mapping to Calc

Generic XML and JSON documents with linkable ranges are now automatically mapped to sheets in Calc. A linkable range is a section of a document containing tabular records. When a document contains multiple linkable ranges, each range gets mapped to a single sheet.

For example, the following JSON document

[
{
"id": 5001,
"name": "Wireless Mouse",
"description": "Ergonomic wireless mouse with adjustable DPI settings.",
"sku": "WM-ERGO-BLK-01",
"price": 25.50,
"stock_quantity": 150,
"category": "Electronics"
},
{
"id": 5002,
"name": "Mechanical Keyboard",
"description": "RGB mechanical keyboard with brown switches for tactile feedback.",
"sku": "MK-RGB-BROWN-02",
"price": 89.99,
"stock_quantity": 75,
"category": "Electronics"
},
{
"id": 5003,
"name": "Laptop Stand",
"description": "Adjustable aluminum laptop stand for improved ergonomics.",
"sku": "LS-ALUM-ADJ-03",
"price": 35.00,
"stock_quantity": 200,
"category": "Accessories"
}
]

gets mapped to the following range of values when opened.

JSON document with linkable range mapped to Calc sheet

There is no constraints on the structure of the original data in the source document as the structure of the original data is analyzed and is automatically mapped to sheet. However, this automatic mapping is done on a best-effort basis, and it may not work in all cases.

XML documents with linkable ranges are handled in a similar fashion. (Kohei Yoshida, Collabora)

DOCX

• Improved line height handling of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean DOC/DOCX documents. (Jonathan Clark) tdf#129808

Markdown

• Added support for exporting to Markdown format (blog post). (Mike Kaganski, Miklos Vajna; Collabora) tdf#160734 tdf#168152 tdf#168172 tdf#168317 tdf#168341 tdf#168662
• Added support for importing from Markdown format, either via files or via the clipboard. (Ujjawal Kumar) tdf#162153
• Added support for using ODT/DOCX templates while importing a Markdown document (blog post). (Miklos Vajna; Collabora)

EPUB

• EPUB export was made much faster, and a progress bar is shown during export. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#133976

Graphics

The Skia graphics engine is now mandatory on both Windows and macOS. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) 07f480b7 9f9550a6

Performance

• Rendering of shape fills was made more performant. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#160345 tdf#149592
• Rendering of SVGs with pattern fills is now faster on Linux. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#101083

User Interface

• All dialogs use vertical tabs with icons now. (Heiko Tietze) tdf#161497

Vertical tabs with small and large icons depending on the number of tabs

• Option to use horizontal tabs instead vertical. (Heiko Tietze) tdf#167108

Select horizontal or vertical tabs in dialogs

• The Layouts panel in the Impress Sidebar now uses a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget. (Parth Raiyani, Collabora) tdf#166964
• The Theme dialog now uses a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget. (Parth Raiyani, Collabora) tdf#167074
• The Presets and Shadow Style Positions from the border page dialog now use a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget. (Parth Raiyani, Collabora) tdf#167536
• The Go to Page/Slide/Sheet dialogs are now async. (Hubert Figuière, Collabora) 8b609509 1beb3252 46c25815
• Allow inserting hyperlink via context menu (when text is selected). (Samuel Mehrbrodt, Collabora) tdf#167544

Insert hyperlink in context menu

• Dialog screenshots can now be copied to the clipboard for immediate pasting in documents (Olivier Hallot, TDF) tdf#166391

Copy screenshot to clipboard

• On Linux, the native GTK and Qt color picker dialogs are now used by default instead of the custom LibreOffice one. This can be configured in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ General (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167669 tdf#169505
• The page size dropdown in the NotebookBar is now visually more consistent with the rest of the User Interface and it displays the full names of the available page sizes. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#136905 tdf#169710
• New symbols for unordered lists (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#168292

Default symbols for unordered list

• Image library for unordered lists (bullets) updated. (Andreas Kainz; Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#139076
• RTL/CTL and CJK editing features are now always shown. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#168719

Accessibility

• Accessibility of the border previews in the Border tab of various dialogs (like Writer's Format ▸ Paragraph dialog) has been improved to avoid confusing screen reader announcement. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167279
• When the Tools ▸ Spelling dialog shows up, it is now properly announced by the Orca screen reader on Linux. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#163802
• Removing the accessible selection no longer unexpectedly sets the caret to the beginning of the text. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167930
• The Help ▸ Check for Updates... dialog is now screen reader accessible. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#104833
• Spelling errors in Writer are now only reported to assistive technology when automatic spell checking is actually enabled. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) NVDA #19170
• Keyboard accessibility for the Tools ▸ Extensions... dialog has been improved. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#127201
• It is now possible to switch between vertical tabs using keyboard shortcuts. (Heiko Tietze, TDF; Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167125 tdf#169383

Scripting

• The version of the internal Python is 3.12.
• Ship sqlite3 with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#168512
• Ship dbm with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#132074
• Ship venv with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#168511
• Ship lzma with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#168513

The ScriptForge libraries

An extensible and robust collection of macro scripting resources for LibreOffice to be invoked from user Basic or Python scripts. (Jean-Pierre Ledure)

The libraries expose a total of 35 services each with a bunch of methods and properties.

New in LibreOffice 26.2:

• The session.GetRangeFromCalc() method reads the values contained in a given range located in a given Calc file. The file does not need to be open.
• The new ScriptForge.Sharedmemory service implements the mechanisms to manage persistent memory storage across Basic and/or Python scripts. In event-driven scripting one can often benefit from having variables still being available when the next script is triggered, probably due to a user action. And this, especially, in Basic + Python mixed environments.
• The scriptforge.pyi stub file, which is a great support when editing python scripts with PyCharm or VSCode, has its syntax upgraded to Python ≥ 3.10. Older typing features are now superseded by more modern alternatives.
• The AccessibleContext UNO API is gradually being deprecated. A serious code revisit was needed. More details in tdf#168409.
• The calc.ColorizeRange() method accepts now negative values in the background and foreground arguments to reset them to their default value.
• The new SFDocuments.Shape service is focused on the description of shapes/images/drawing objects stored in (in the current release only) Calc documents. Next methods are implemented : shape.Anchor(), shape.ExportToFile(), shape.Pick(), shape.Resize(), and shape.Rotate() about any pivot point.

The whole set of services (except when better done by native built-in functions) is made available for Python scripts with identical syntax and behavior as in Basic.

ScriptForge in the wiki: read Macros/ScriptForge (Lobaluna).

The English version of the documentation of the ScriptForge libraries (26.2) is partially integrated in the LibreOffice help pages (https://help.libreoffice.org/26.2/en-US/text/sbasic/shared/03/lib_ScriptForge.html?DbPAR=BASIC). Their finalization and translation into other languages is underway. (Alain Romedenne, Rafael Lima)

Localization

Improvements to proofing tools and language support

• Spell check dictionaries were updated for the languages: Hungarian, Mongolian, Portuguese (pt_PT)
• Hyphenation rules were updated for the languages: Hungarian

LibreOffice Help

Help contents upgrades and fixes:

• O. Hallot, TDF
• Stanislav Horacek
• Michael Otto
• Jean Pierre Ledure
• Ilmari Lauhakangas, TDF
• Mike Kaganski, Collabora
• Taichi Haradaguchi
• Samuel Mehrbrodt, Collabora

Feature Removal / Deprecation

• Euro converter wizard has been removed (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#135580

Platform Compatibility

Mac

• LibreOffice 26.2 requires macOS 11 or newer to run.

Linux

• The builds provided by TDF now follow AlmaLinux 9 baseline, which means that they will only run on CPUs with microarchitecture level x86-64-v2 or higher. You may check the levels supported by your CPU by running /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 --help

API Changes

• The com.sun.star.style.ParagraphAdjust enumeration has two new values: START and END (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#118350
• The SheetSortDescriptor2 service has got an additional attribute NumberBehavior. The .uno:DataSort command has got this attribute as an additional parameter. Find more about using it in Macros/BasicMacrosSortingInCalc (Regina Henschel).

Configuration Changes

Current Experimental Features

Experimental features are enabled Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced ▸ Enable experimental features (may be unstable)

• Writer now has provisional support for font-relative first line, before-text, and after-text paragraph indentation. This feature may be used by entering indentation values in the paragraph properties dialog, including the unit 'em' for the standard typographical unit, or 'ic' for the width of a CJK ideographic character. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#36709 tdf#163913
• New Macro Manager dialog Tools ▸ Macros ▸ Macro Manager that combines the functions of 5 existing dialogs used for Basic macro and scripting framework macro language management into one dialog. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#120658

Macro Manager dialog that combines the functions of 5 existing dialogs used for Basic macro and scripting framework macro language management into one dialog.

Original source

Writer

• Move line hyphenation rule is added to choose whether or not to hyphenate the last line words of the pages and move the whole lines to the next pages instead (blog post). See also interoperability with MSO 2016 and later in Filters (this development was funded through the NGI0 Entrust Fund, a fund established by NLnet Foundation with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet programme). (László Németh) tdf#165354
• While hyphenating text, there is an option to move the whole last line to the next page in order to avoid splitting the last word in the page (another case in file details 'File history' section).
• Paragraph, column, page and spread end zones (blog post) (László Németh)
• Minimum, desired and maximum word spacing feature (blog post) (László Németh)
• First and secondary keys are shown in the tooltips of index fields. (Andreas Heinisch) tdf#143157
• For Heading entries, Navigator now displays a tooltip with the outline word and character count that includes all sub-outline words and characters. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#163646
• A command was added to insert a paragraph break before a table: ".uno:BreakAboveTable". (Ujjawal Kumar) tdf#149825
• It is now easier to control how text is selected while scrolling the view. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#50743
• A dialog was added for copying the content of a field from a read-only document. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#164318
• A new field that displays the page count for a range until the next numbering reset was added. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#71583
• A command (with the shortcut Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + F2) was added for converting fields into plain text. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#45946
• Per-window track changes recording in Writer (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• It is now possible to 'reinstate' changes in Writer (reject with history, blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• Support for interdependent tracked changes is now improved (blog post blog post 2). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
• An option to redact images was added in the Auto-Redact dialog Tools ▸ Auto-Redact ▸ Add Target. (Karthik Godha) tdf#139331
• Select 'All Images' from the dropdown menu in the 'Add Target' dialog to redact images.
• It is now possible to set the language of certain punctuation characters in Writer. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#66791 tdf#166011 tdf#166012
• In some cases, Writer will treat punctuation as a different language than intended. This can now be controlled by selecting the text and setting the correct language.

Accessibility

• There is now an accessibility check for links and references in header/footer. (Balázs Varga, Collabora) tdf#164797

Performance

• A certain heavy DOC file inspired optimisations to the loading of language data and laying out of graphical objects. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#141415
• Loading Writer documents with change tracked moves is now faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#162343
• Undo handling was optimised, making the deletion of very large Writer tables much faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#136238
• Loading of Writer tables containing bookmarks was made faster. (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#165918
• Large right-to-left Writer documents are faster to open. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#64991

Calc

• Text Import dialog, that is used in CSV import, now has Always show on import checkbox (enabled by default). This checkbox controls, if the dialog will be shown on CSV import, or if the saved (configured on last dialog use) settings will be used automatically. When the checkbox is unchecked, and the dialog is normally not shown, it is possible to show it (once), using a new Edit filter settings checkbox in the File Open dialog, which works the same way as long-existing respective checkbox in File Save dialog: it gets enabled, when a file format, that has configurable settings, is selected in the filter frop-down list. (Shardul Vikram Singh) tdf#74580
• Conditional formatting operators in icon sets can now be customised. (Ahmed Hamed) tdf#61313
• A "Clear AutoFilter" option was added to the context menu of Calc cells. (Ujjawal Kumar) tdf#164322
• Text Import dialog is now only shown for Paste Special actions to avoid unnecessary interruptions. (Shardul Vikram Singh) tdf#65872

New functions

• CHOOSECOLS function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#151000
• CHOOSEROWS function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150999
• DROP function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150998
• EXPAND function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#151001
• HSTACK function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150868
• TAKE function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150997
• TEXTAFTER function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150865
• TEXTBEFORE function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150864
• TEXTSPLIT function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150866
• TOCOL function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150879
• TOROW function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150878
• VSTACK function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150867
• WRAPCOLS function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150881
• WRAPROWS function was added. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#150880

Performance

• Speed of rendering XLSX files with lots of conditional formatting was improved. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) 185df5e6
• Speed of opening XLSX files with lots of conditional formatting was greatly improved. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#134864
• Speed of opening XLSX files with lots of graphical objects was significantly improved. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#130326 tdf#150623
• Row height calculation when switching Calc sheets was optimised, greatly reducing the waiting time in complex spreadsheets. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#150623
• Switching Calc sheets with lots of drawing objects is now much faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#131595
• Spellchecking performance in multi-language spreadsheets was improved (Caolán McNamara, Noel Grandin; Collabora) 9a1f131a 3c7156da
• Handling large charts in Calc is now much faster when loading, toggling edit mode and switching sheets. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#147874 tdf#151876
• The loading speed of XLSX files with lots of customFormat attributes in rows was improved. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#163015
• The loading speed of XLSX files with lots of formulas, conditional formatting and comments was greatly improved. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#166684
• The performance of working with spreadsheets with lots of comments was improved. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#161372

Impress

• Ctrl + scrollwheel changes how many slides are displayed per row in the Slide Sorter view. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#117946
• Embedded fonts in PPTX files are now supported. (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora) faf45f80 d0ee08cf
• Better algorithm to determine is a font is used and needs to be embedded when exporting to PPTX (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora) 777ff280
• Master Slides in Impress and Master Pages in Draw can now be copied. (Mohamed Ali) tdf#45617

Draw

• Boundaries are shown for page margins; disable with the expert option Draw::Misc::TextObject::ShowBoundary (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#89420

Core / General

• A new application-wide Viewer mode is implemented. In it, all files are opened in read-only mode; all editing tools are disabled. The mode is controlled by the new "ViewerAppMode" expert configuration. (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#62845
• On Windows, the automatic (“MAR”) update mechanism now only registers its update_service.exe as a Windows “LibreOffice Maintenance Service” (that allows to do updates with administrator privileges) when LibreOffice is installed to C:\Program Files. (Stephan Bergmann, Collabora) tdf#164225 tdf#162780
• Background image in the document now visible as a bitmap thumbnail in Page Style ▸ Area ▸ Bitmap. (Justin Luth) tdf#125969
• SHA384 with AES_192 is now taken into account, it allows for example to open more encrypted files. (Julien Nabet) tdf#166241
• PDF signature timestamping on document export now requires a single cryptographic signature computation instead of two. A PIN code must therefore be entered at most once in the process. (Juraj Šarinay) tdf#147452
• The format of PDF documents signed on export is now compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader. (Juraj Šarinay) tdf#121133
• OLE objects, such as Charts in Calc, can now be resized proportionally with or without ⇧ Shift key in edit mode (same behavior as other shape objects). Moreover, moving OLE objects in edit mode by dragging the border is forced to 45° direction if ⇧ Shift is pressed. (Laurent Balland) tdf#163816
• 25.8.3 Disable extra spacing between Hangul and non-CJK characters. (Jonathan Clark) tdf#136663

Filters

• Encrypted hybrid PDFs can now be imported. (David Gilbert) tdf#55425
• Autofilters are now imported from MS Excel XML files. (Kohei Yoshida) tdf#154311
• 25.8.2 Deleted comments with tracked changed are now fully removed in non-native DOCX/DOC documents. (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#108791
• Display of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean DOC/DOCX documents is significantly more accurate. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#88908 tdf#83844 tdf#80596
• Add layout interoperability of hyphenated DOCX documents created in MSO 2016 and later: Move only hyphenated word across pages and columns (not full line, as in the previous MSO 2013 interoperability fix), (blog post), see also the associated ODF extension and user interface developments (this development was funded through the NGI0 Entrust Fund, a fund established by NLnet Foundation with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet programme). (László Németh) tdf#165354
• DOCX multilevel numbering fixed. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) tdf#166975

PDF 2.0

Support for exporting PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2) was added (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)

• Implemented modern AES-256 encryption that is mandatory with PDF 2.0.
• Added PDF/A-4 support, which is using PDF 2.0 as the base.
• Rearranged the PDF Export UI to more logically combine the sections (Forms).
• Combined the PDF and PDF/A versions into one drop-down.
• Added new structure elements (/Em /Strong /Title)
• Added /AFRelationship for the embedded files.
• In hybrid mode the embedded ODF document is marked as source.

User Interface

• Edit Field dialog can be opened in read-only documents. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#164318
• Formatting toolbar is visible in sections that are marked as editable in read-only documents. (Tibor Nagy, Collabora) tdf#146549
• Currency dropdown no longer requires clicking an OK button. (Szymon Kłos, Collabora) tdf#165589
• Quick Find bar now has an option to match diacritics. (Johann Lorber, Linagora) tdf#163616
• A toggle button to show the password in password input dialogs was added. (Balázs Varga, Collabora; Karthik Godha) tdf#146947
• Toggling rotation mode for a selected object can now be done with a single click in Writer and Calc and not only in Impress and Draw. (Oliver Specht, CIB) tdf#90293
• LibreOffice document windows as well as the Start Center will now toggle into and out of native macOS full screen mode by pressing a window's green title button. (Patrick Luby) tdf#128186
• LibreOffice's Window menu now includes the window positioning and arrangement menu items that Apple added in macOS Sequoia. (Patrick Luby) tdf#165448
• Welcome/WhatsNew dialog offers access to the UI picker and the appearance options (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#137931
• The UI picker View ▸ User Interface... allows to activate toolbars (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#158880

Accessibility

• Menus in the File ▸ Templates ▸ Manage Templates dialog are now screen reader accessible on Windows. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#157001
• Support for the IAccessible2 "text-indent" attribute was added, which can be used by assistive technology like screen readers to report the indent of a paragraph's first line (the NVDA screen reader on Windows supports that from NVDA version 2025.1 on). (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#164795
• The table design view in Base (Tables ▸ Create Table in Design View...) no longer becomes unresponsive when a screen reader is active on Windows. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) 8a919d02
• Comboboxes and other controls inside toolbars are now also represented in the accessibility tree of the application. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#163989

Changes in UI strings

Scripting

• The version of the internal Python is 3.11.
• Ship pip with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#162786

The ScriptForge libraries

An extensible and robust collection of macro scripting resources for LibreOffice to be invoked from user Basic or Python scripts. (Jean-Pierre Ledure)

The libraries expose a total of 33 services each with a bunch of methods and properties.

New in LibreOffice 25.8:

• The new calc.XRectangle(rangename) property returns the coordinates (in pixels) on the screen where the given range is located. This opens the door to effective use of popup menus. See Wiki: popup menu.
• The translation in Spanish is now available (B. Antonio Fernández).
• The calc.Intersect(range1, range2) method computes the common area of 2 input ranges.
• With the contextmenu.RemoveAllItems() method, you can opt for configuring a totally customized context menu. Example in Wiki: context menu.
• To avoid duplicates, the document.MenuHeaders property lists the menus present in the menubar.
• The Calc service now hosts new formatting methods (AlignRange, BorderRange, ColorizeRange, DecorateFont and FormatRange). See an example on Wiki: format range.
• TabPageContainer controls may now be inserted in dialogs by code. Page switching in dialogs: Wiki: tabbed pages.
• Still in dialogs, the dialog.ImportControl() method copies controls between dialogs: Wiki: building compound dialogs.
• The new platform.UntitledPrefix property provides the prefix used to name new documents. This can make macros more language agnostic.
• The Exception service is revised : the ReportScriptErrors, StopWhenError, ReturnCode and ReturnCodeDescription properties let the author of scripts decide what ScriptForge should do when an error is detected by the software.
• The ui.CreateBaseDocument() let you define, in addition to HSQLDB, FIREBIRD and CALC (embedded) databases, also the type FIREBIRD_EXTERNAL.
• The new calc.DefinedNames property associated with the calc.DefineName() method lets you manage defined names both at sheet and global levels.

The whole set of services (except when better done by native built-in functions) is made available for Python scripts with identical syntax and behavior as in Basic.

ScriptForge in the wiki: read Macros/ScriptForge (Lobaluna).

The English version of the documentation of the ScriptForge libraries (25.8) is partially integrated in the LibreOffice help pages (https://help.libreoffice.org/25.8/en-US/text/sbasic/shared/03/lib_ScriptForge.html?DbPAR=BASIC). Their finalization and translation into other languages is underway. (Alain Romedenne, Rafael Lima)

Android Viewer

Localization

New languages/locales with locale data

• Add Albanian locale. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#96151
• Add Moldovan locale. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#136753
• Add Bitcoin currency. (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#167431

Improvements to proofing tools and language support

• Spell check dictionaries and hyphenation rules were added for the languages: Punjabi, Oriya, Sanskrit, Kannada, and Assamese.
• Spell check dictionaries were added for the languages: Tamil, and Marathi.
• Spell check dictionaries were updated for the languages: Danish, English GB + ZA, Hindi, Mongolian, Spanish, Thai, and Ukrainian.
• Marathi thesaurus was added.
• Slovenian thesaurus was updated. (Martin Srebotnjak, OdprtiTezaver)

LibreOffice Help

Help pages for new Calc functions:
CHOOSECOLS CHOOSEROWS DROP EXPAND HSTACK TAKE TEXTAFTER TEXTBEFORE TEXTSPLIT TOCOL TOROW VSTACK WRAPCOLS WRAPROWS (Olivier Hallot, TDF)

Help content updates and fixes:

• O. Hallot, TDF
• G. Kelemen, Collabora
• A. Romedenne
• I. Lauhakangas, TDF
• S. Horáček
• B. Buzea
• A. Timar, Collabora Productivity

Feature Removal / Deprecation

The “Community” tagline was removed.

Platform Compatibility

Support for Windows 7 and 8/8.1 was removed.

Support for x86 (32-bit) Windows builds is deprecated.

25.8 will be the last version to run on macOS 10.15 - LibreOffice 26.2 will require macOS 11 or later

API Changes

• The XTiledRenderable UNO interface was removed. ccefc5e5

Configuration Changes

Support for Java instrumentation has been added. tdf#165774

Current Experimental Features

Experimental features are enabled Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced ▸ Enable experimental features (may be unstable)

• Writer now has provisional support for font-relative first line, before-text, and after-text paragraph indentation. This feature may be used by entering indentation values in the paragraph properties dialog, including the unit 'em' for the standard typographical unit, or 'ic' for the width of a CJK ideographic character. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#36709 tdf#163913
• BASIC IDE code completion and auxiliary resources, in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Basic IDE
• New Macro Manager dialog Tools ▸ Macros ▸ Macro Manager that combines the functions of 5 existing dialogs used for Basic macro and scripting framework macro language management into one dialog. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#120658
• ODF Wholesome Encryption: A new mode of password-based ODF encryption has been implemented, with the following advantages (Michael Stahl, Collabora) tdf#105844:
  • more performant due to deriving a key only once per package
  • more tamper-resistant with authenticated encryption (AES-GCM)
  • better hiding of metadata to reduce information leaks
  • higher resistance to brute forcing using memory-hard Argon2id key derivation function

Warning: You will need LibreOffice 24.2 or later to open these encrypted files. For this reason, by default the pre-existing standard ODF encryption is used.

Original source