LibreOffice 6.0 is now available, the first major update of 2018 and dramatically improved

We can now download LibreOffice 6.0 for Windows, Linux and macOS (and the cloud). This is the first major update this year, and one that the Document Foundation itself has called “dramatically better”.

The free office suite is also celebrating its seventh anniversary, and with version 6.0 they claim to have a line of more powerful, simple, and secure programs with better interoperability with Microsoft Office documents.

The best ones come not only to the central engine of the suite, but to the individual models. Both the word processor (Writer), the spreadsheets (Calc), the presentations (Impress), and the Drawings app have received improvements and new functions.

ePUBs, OpenPGP, improved interface

Now there is a function to save documents like ePUB, the panel to customize the interface has been redesigned to be more friendly, and so has the panel of special characters.

In all desktop applications it is now possible to use OpenPGP to sign and encrypt ODF documents . Added a long selection of open source fonts “Noto”.

The help system has also been improved to be easier to use and more friendly with mobile devices.

What’s new in Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw

New styles of tables have been added in the word processor to help make the data in your documents look better. The search bar now has a drop-down menu to make navigation easier.

In Writer, a new Forms menu has also been added that makes it easier to insert interactive forms in the documents. Custom dictionaries have also been improved.

In Calc, control over spreadsheets and protected cells has been improved. It is also now possible to export a selection of cells or a group of shapes in PNG or JPG format.

In Impress , 10 new templates have been added for personal or business projects. The default aspect ratio has also been changed (at last) to 16: 9 so that presentations are displayed correctly on widescreen monitors.

LibreOffice Online has also received several basic improvements, such as spell checking in Calc, Writer and Impress, a “save as” function, and the row limit for Calc was raised to half a million.