LibreOffice

What you get out of this

LibreOffice is an office suite that you download, install and use without paying, without an account and without a subscription. It includes a word processor, spreadsheets, presentation software, drawing tools and a database component. The files stay on your own computer. No supplier can shut them off or raise the price without warning.

For a company it solves three practical things at once: you can write the business plan, work out the calculations and make the sales presentation on any computer in the company, even on the old laptop that someone inherited. And you can open and save Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, which you will need when a customer or authority sends you a template.

What you need before you start

• A computer with Windows 10 or 11, or Linux Mint. It also works on macOS, but that route is not described here.
• About 2 GB of free disk space for the installation.
• Fifteen minutes. The download takes the longest of everything.

You do not need an account, a registration or an email address. That is unusual enough to be worth saying.

Two versions, and which one you should choose

On libreoffice.org there are always two versions at the same time, and the names do not explain themselves.

Still is the older of the two version lines. It has had several rounds of bug fixes and is the one you should take if the computer will be used for something you do not want to be disturbed in. Fresh is the newer line, with features that have not yet been worn in. The difference in practice is small for anyone who writes text and calculates in spreadsheets.

Take Still. A company that needs to get its invoices out does not have time to troubleshoot an office suite.

Windows: the installation file

1. Go to libreoffice.org and select Windows x86_64. Almost every computer sold today is 64-bit, so that is the right choice unless you know otherwise. If you have one of the newer ARM-based Windows computers (for example with a Snapdragon processor), there is a separate Windows Aarch64 variant on the same page.
2. Run the file you downloaded. It is named something like LibreOffice_[version]_Win_x86-64.msi.
3. Choose Typical installation. It gives you all the programs. Custom is there for anyone who wants to remove parts, and it is not worth the trouble to save a few hundred megabytes.
4. The installation takes a couple of minutes. No restart is needed.
5. Start LibreOffice from the start menu. The first window is the start center, where you choose what kind of document you want to create.

Download from libreoffice.org and nowhere else. There are sites that offer LibreOffice with ads or extra programs included, and they have nothing to do with the project.

Linux Mint: it is already there

On Linux Mint, LibreOffice is preinstalled. Open the start menu, type writer and the program is there. If you still need to reinstall it, or someone has removed it, one command in the Terminal is enough:

sudo apt install libreoffice

What you get then is the version in Mint's package archive, and it is behind. Linux Mint 22.3 is based on Ubuntu 24.04 and the package there is 24.2.7, so about two years old. It works well for text and spreadsheets, but lacks what has been added since then.

If you want a newer version on Mint, you can use Flatpak, which is already installed and where Flathub is enabled from the start. Open the Software Manager, search for LibreOffice and choose the entry marked Flatpak. You can also run it from the Terminal:

flatpak install flathub org.libreoffice.LibreOffice

One thing to know about Flatpak: the program runs a bit more isolated from the rest of the system and does not always reach all folders without extra steps. If your files are in the home folder, you will not notice anything.

File formats, and the trap that costs the most time

LibreOffice saves by default in OpenDocument: .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets, .odp for presentations. It is an open format, and technically it is the better choice.

But the bank has Word. The supplier has Word. The company you send the quote to has Word. If they open an .odt, often nothing happens at all, and then you have lost an impression before anyone has read a line.

So do this: work in whichever format you like, but always send PDF when the recipient is only going to read. The button is right there in the toolbar, and the path through the menu is File, Export As, Export Directly as PDF. If the recipient is going to edit, save as .docx via File, Save As and choose Word 2007-365 (.docx). LibreOffice then asks if you are sure. Answer yes.

If you want to avoid the question every time: Tools, Options, Load/Save, General, and set the default format to Word and Excel respectively. If you mostly send documents to others, that is often the right setting.

What actually goes wrong between Word and Writer

The text comes along. The formatting usually does too. Three things jump, and they are worth recognizing.

Fonts. Calibri and Cambria come with Microsoft Office, not with Windows and not with LibreOffice. If they are missing, they get replaced, the line breaks shift and one page suddenly becomes two. Stick to fonts that exist everywhere, such as Liberation Sans, Arial or Times New Roman, and you avoid the surprise.

Tracked changes and comments. They work both ways, but the position can slip by a line or so. Read through before you send.

Macros. An Excel sheet with VBA macros does not run in Calc. It is rare in a small business, but if you have received a ready-made budget template from someone and the buttons do nothing, that is the explanation.

Four things to do right away

An installed program that nobody opens is just occupied disk space. Try this the same evening.

1. Build the company quote template in Writer. Logo at the top, the company name and organization number, a table with rows for item, quantity and price. Save as a template via File, Save as template. The next quote takes two minutes instead of twenty.
2. Set up cash flow in Calc. One column for date, one for what it concerned, one for in and one for out. In the cell under the out column you write =SUMMA(D2:D100). That is the whole overview you need to know whether the money lasts until the next purchase, and it is the same figures you will report later.
3. Make the sales presentation in Impress. Six slides are enough: who you are, what problem you solve, the product, the price, how to buy, contact. More slides do not make a pitch better.
4. Export everything to PDF and open the file. Check that the fonts look the way you intended and that nothing ended up outside the page. It takes thirty seconds and saves you from a document that looks broken at the recipient's end.

Two parts that are easy to miss

Draw is the drawing program, and it is the fastest way to fill in a PDF that someone has sent. Open the PDF file in Draw, type in the boxes, export as PDF again. It works for forms where nobody thought about making them fillable.

Base is the database part. It is old, it is fiddly and it needs Java, because the default engine HSQLDB is still Java-based (Firebird is available as an experimental option, but is not the default). Do not spend time there unnecessarily. If you need a real database there are better routes, and most businesses get by fine with a spreadsheet.

If something goes wrong

The program does not start after installation on Windows. Restart the computer once. If it still does not work, uninstall and reinstall with the installation file run as administrator.

A document opens in the wrong program. Right-click the file, select Open with and Choose another app, and check the box to always use it.

Autocorrect changes things you do not want changed. It turns straight quotation marks into typographic ones and capitalizes the first letter after a period. You turn it off under Tools, AutoCorrect Options.

A document was not saved before the computer died. LibreOffice saves recovery information at regular intervals and offers it the next time you start. You set the interval under Tools, Options, Load/Save. Ten minutes is too long when a quote has to go out the same afternoon. Set it to two.

The license, in short

LibreOffice is free software under MPL-2.0. You may install it on as many computers as you like, use it in your business and keep using it for as long as the business exists. There is no trial period that ends and no feature locked behind a payment. Behind the project is The Document Foundation, a foundation, not a company that needs to sell you something later.

If you have questions about which tools suit your business, get in touch.