Getting Started Guide 7.3
Preface
This document is Copyright © 2022 by the LibreOffice Documentation Team. Contributors are listed below. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either the GNU General Public License (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), version 3 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), version 4.0 or later.
All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.
To this edition
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Jean Hollis Weber |
Kees Kriek |
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To previous editions
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Jean Hollis Weber |
Peter Schofield |
Kees Kriek |
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Leo Moons |
Steve Fanning |
Paul Figueiredo |
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Andrew Jensen |
Amanda Labby |
Cathy Crumbley |
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Dan Lewis |
Dave Barton |
Simon Quigley |
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Jorge Rodriguez |
Olivier Hallot |
Lera Goncaruk |
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Valerii Goncharuk |
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Published February 2022. Based on LibreOffice 7.3 Community.
Other versions of LibreOffice may differ in appearance and functionality.
Anyone who wants to get up to speed quickly with LibreOffice will find this Getting Started Guide valuable. You may be new to office software, or you may be familiar with another office suite.
This book introduces the main components of LibreOffice:
Writer (word processing)
Calc (spreadsheets)
Impress (presentations)
Draw (vector graphics)
Base (database)
Math (equation editor)
It also covers some of the features common to all components, including setup and customization, styles and templates, macro recording, and printing. For more detail, see the user guides for the individual components.
This book, the other LibreOffice user guides, the Help system, and user support systems assume that you are familiar with your computer and basic functions such as starting a program, opening and saving files.
LibreOffice comes with an extensive online Help system. This is your first line of support. Windows and Linux users can choose to download and install the offline Help for use when not connected to the Internet; the offline Help is installed with the program on macOS.
To display the Help system, press F1 or select Help > LibreOffice Help on the Menu bar. If you do not have the offline help installed on your computer and you are connected to the Internet, your default browser will open the online Help pages on the LibreOffice website.
The Help menu also includes links to other LibreOffice information and support resources. The options marked by a ‡ sign in the list below are only accessible if your computer is connected to the Internet.
What's This? For quick tips when a toolbar is visible, place the mouse pointer over any of the icons to see a small box (“tooltip”) with a brief explanation of the icon’s function. For a more detailed explanation, select Help > What's This? and hold the pointer over the icon. In addition, you can choose whether to activate Extended Tips using Tools > Options > LibreOffice > General.
User Guides ‡ Opens your default browser at the Documentation page of the LibreOffice website, https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/. There you will find copies of user guides and other useful information.
Show Tip of the Day Opens a small window with a random tip on how to use LibreOffice.
Search Commands Opens a window where you can type a few letters or the name of a Menu bar command, to quickly find where the command is located. Clicking on a command in the resulting list may open a relevant dialog or have other effects.
Get Help Online ‡ Opens your default browser at the Ask LibreOffice forum of questions and answers from the LibreOffice community, https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/.
Send Feedback ‡ Opens your default browser at the Feedback page of the LibreOffice website, https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/feedback/. From there you can report bugs, suggest new features and communicate with others in the LibreOffice community.
Restart in Safe Mode Opens a dialog where you can restart LibreOffice and reset the software to its default settings.
Get Involved ‡ Opens your default browser at the Get Involved page of the LibreOffice website, https://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/. There you can choose a topic of interest to help improve the program.
Donate to LibreOffice ‡ Opens your default browser at the Donation page of the LibreOffice website, https://donate.libreoffice.org/. There you can choose to make a donation to support LibreOffice.
License Information Outlines the licenses under which LibreOffice is made available.
Check for Updates ‡ Opens a dialog and checks the LibreOffice website for updates to your version of the software.
About LibreOffice Opens a dialog and displays information about the version of LibreOffice and the operating system you are using. This information will often be requested if you ask the community for help or assistance with the software. (On macOS, this item is under LibreOffice on the Menu bar.)
The LibreOffice community not only develops software, but provides free, volunteer-based support. In addition to the Help menu links above, there are other online community support options available, see the table below.
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Free LibreOffice support |
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FAQs |
Answers to frequently asked questions |
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Mailing lists |
Free community support is provided by a network of experienced users |
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Questions & Answers and |
Free community assistance is provided in a Question & Answer format. Search similar topics or ask a new question in https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions The service is available in several other languages; just replace /en/ with de, es, fr, ja, ko, nl, pt, tr, and many others in the web address above. |
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Native language support |
The LibreOffice website in various languages Mailing lists for native languages Information about social networking |
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Accessibility options |
Information about available accessibility options |
You can also pay for support through service contracts from a vendor or consulting firm specializing in LibreOffice. For information about certified professional support, see The Document Foundation’s website: https://www.documentfoundation.org/gethelp/support/
For schools, educational and research institutions, and large organizations, see https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.
LibreOffice runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems, each of which has several versions and can be customized by users (fonts, colors, themes, window managers). The illustrations in this guide were taken from a variety of computers and operating systems. Therefore, some illustrations will not look exactly like what you see on your computer display.
Also, some of the dialogs may be different because of the settings selected in LibreOffice. In some cases (mainly Open, Save, and Print dialogs), you can choose to use dialogs from your computer’s operating system or from LibreOffice. To change which dialogs are used, go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > General and select or deselect the option Use LibreOffice dialogs.
The LibreOffice community has created icons for several icon sets: Breeze, Colibre, Elementary, Karasa Jaga, Sifr, and Sakapura; some are also available in a dark version. As a user, you can select your own preferred set. The icons in this guide have been taken from a variety of LibreOffice installations that use different sets of icons. The icons for some of the many tools available in LibreOffice may differ from the ones used in this guide.
To change the icon set used, go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View. In the Icon style section, choose from the drop-down list.
Notes
Some Linux distributions include LibreOffice as part of the installation and may not include all the icon sets mentioned above. You should be able to download other icon sets from the software repository for your Linux distribution if you wish to use them.
The Galaxy, Oxygen, and Tango icon sets are no longer included as part of the standard installation package. You can download and install them as extensions from https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/.
Some of the previously included gallery sets are now available only as extensions; see https://extensions.libreoffice.org/?Tags%5B%5D=49 or search for specific ones.
For example, the People Gallery is available from https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/people-gallery
Some keystrokes and menu items are different on macOS from those used in Windows and Linux. The table below gives some common substitutions for the instructions in this book. For a more detailed list, see the application Help.
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Windows or Linux |
macOS equivalent |
Effect |
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Tools > Options |
LibreOffice > Preferences |
Access setup options |
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Right-click |
Control+click and/or right-click depending on computer setup |
Open a context menu |
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Ctrl (Control) |
⌘ (Command) |
Used with other keys |
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Alt |
⌥ (Option) or Alt, depending on keyboard |
Used with other keys |
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F11 |
⌘+T |
Open Styles deck in Sidebar |
The terms used in LibreOffice for most parts of the user interface (the parts of the program you see and use, in contrast to the behind-the-scenes code that actually makes it work) are the same as for most other programs.
A dialog is a special type of window. Its purpose is to inform you of something, or request input from you, or both. The technical names for common controls are shown in Figure 1. In most cases the technical terms are not used in this book, but it is useful to know them because the Help and other sources of information often use them.
Figure 1: Dialog showing common controls
1) Tabbed page (not strictly speaking a control).
2) Radio buttons (only one can be selected at a time).
3) Checkbox (more than one can be selected at a time).
4) Spin box (click the up and down arrows to change the number shown in the adjacent text box, or type in the text box).
5) Thumbnail or preview.
6) Drop-down list from which to select an item.
7) Push buttons.
In most cases, you can interact only with the dialog (not the document itself) as long as the dialog remains open. When you close the dialog after use (usually, clicking OK or another button saves your changes and closes the dialog), then you can again work with the document.
Some dialogs can be left open as you work, so you can switch back and forth between the dialog and the document. An example of this type is the Find & Replace dialog.
How is LibreOffice licensed?
May I distribute LibreOffice to anyone? May I sell it? May I use it in my business?
How many computers may I install it on?
Is LibreOffice available in my language?
How can you make it for free?
I am writing a software application. May I use programming code from LibreOffice in my program?
Why do I need Java to run LibreOffice? Is it written in Java?
How can I contribute to LibreOffice?
May I distribute the PDF of this book, or print and sell copies?
LibreOffice 7.3 Community includes many changes not visible in the user interface. These changes include further improvements in interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats, including new features targeted at users migrating from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, or exchanging documents between the two office suites. These improvements include:
New handling of change tracking in tables and when text is moved.
Performance improvements when opening large DOCX and XLSX/XLSM files, improved rendering speed of some complex documents, and new rendering speed improvements when using the Skia back-end introduced with LibreOffice 7.1.
Improvements to import/export filters.
ScriptForge libraries, which make it easier to develop macros, have been extended with various features.
In addition, LibreOffice’s Help has been improved to support all users, with particular attention for those switching from Microsoft Office.
More information is in the announcement:
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/02/02/libreoffice-73-community/ and in the Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.3.
This user guide has been updated from Getting Started Guide 7.2. It covers some of the new features that are visible in the user interface, but not all; others are covered in the individual component guides. Portions of this guide have been rewritten for clarity, and some topics not in previous editions have been included.