Introduction and Advantages of Libre Office
Introduction and Advantages of Libre Office
LibreOffice is a freely available, fully-featured office productivity suite. Its native file format
is Open Document Format (ODF), an open standard format that is being adopted by
governments world wide as a required file format for publishing and accepting documents.
LibreOffice can also open and save documents in many other formats, including those used
by several versions of Microsoft Office.
Calc (spreadsheet)
Calc has all of the advanced analysis, charting, and decision making features expected from
a high-end spreadsheet. It includes over 300 functions for financial, statistical, and
mathematical operations, among others. The Scenario Manager provides “what if” analysis.
Calc generates 2Dand 3D charts, which can be integrated into other LibreOffice documents.
You can also open and work with Microsoft Excel workbooks and save them in Excel format.
Calc can also export spreadsheets in several formats, including for example Comma
Separated Value (CSV), Adobe PDF and HTML formats.
Impress (presentations)
Impress provides all the common multimedia presentation tools, such as special effects,
animation, and drawing tools. It is integrated with the advanced graphics capabilities of
LibreOffice Draw and Math components. Sideshows can be further enhanced using Font
work special effects text, as well as sound and video clips. Impress is compatible with
Microsoft Power Point file format and can also save your work in numerous graphics
formats, including Macro media Flash (SWF).
Advantages of LibreOffice
Here are some of the advantages of LibreOffice over other office suites:
• No licensing fees. LibreOffice is free for anyone to use and distribute at no cost. Many
features that are available as extra cost add-ins in other office suites (like PDF export) are
free with LibreOffice. There are no hidden charges now or in the future.
• Open source. You can distribute, copy, and modify the software as much as you wish, in
accordance with the LibreOffice Open Source licenses.
• Cross-platform. LibreOffice runs on several hardware architectures and under multiple
operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Consistent user interface. All the components have a similar “look and feel,” making
them easy to use and master.
• Integration. The components of LibreOffice are well integrated with one another.
– All the components share a common spelling checker and other tools, which are used
consistently across the suite. For example, the drawing tools available in Writer are also
found in Calc, with similar but enhanced versions in Impress and Draw.
– You do not need to know which application was used to create a particular file. For
example, you can open a Draw file from Writer.
• You have a voice. Enhancements, software fixes, and release dates are community-driven.
You can join the community and affect the course of the product you use.