LibreOffice Writer didn’t even blink: all revisions, comments, and fonts came across perfectly. Opening some heavily-revised and commented chapter files from my last book in usually leads to mis-rendered comments and loads of font issues.

In LibreOffice, that’s no longer the case. has long-touted its capability to open and save Office files, but in reality most users know that any file with any kind of complexity was going to have to have problems coming across. The feature I found most helpful in LibreOffice 3.3 was a much better improvement in file importing from Microsoft Office. But it still bears noting, because a lot of the problems users may have with the suite could still be present.Ī lot, but not all, so let’s give credit where credit is due. Expecting a drastic change is folly in that timeframe. This is to be expected, of course, since the fork of LibreOffice from the Oracle-controlled (formerly Sun-controlled) project only occurred four months ago. And while there are a few new features of note, this is still pretty much, with all the attendant advantages and foibles. The Document Foundation released the first new version of its LibreOffice suite on January 25th, and it was far too tempting not to grab a copy and run it through its paces.

Openoffice 3.3