For years, many people have been looking for free or low-cost alternatives to Microsoft Office, with mixed fortunes and a judgment that often started like this: "it works well, but it's not the same thing". This was true until the arrival of LibreOffice, born from the same developers as OpenOffice, with a free and free license also for commercial purposes, which has now reached a maturity that has become a certainty, a program that can replace Microsoft Office for both use home and for professional and business use .
For those who have been using LibreOffice for some time, for those who have recently used it and above all for those who have used it without finding satisfaction, we see here how to configure the program to the best with its options to change and customize to optimize LibreOffice and increase its performance to the maximum. to make the program faster, more beautiful and easier to use .
READ ALSO: Better LibreOffice features compared to Microsoft Office
1) Speed up Libreoffice in loading
If you want to load LibreOffice faster there is a simple solution to correct the way the program uses RAM.
This option is set, by default, to make LibreOffice not have problems on older or slower PCs, but if you have a computer with 3 GB of RAM or more you can absolutely optimize and allow it to use more RAM.
Then open LibreOffice, go to the Tools menu at the top and then to Options .
In the sidebar, select the Memory item and change, under Graphic cache :
- Use of Libre Office at 128 MB
- 10 MB memory per object .
In the sidebar, under the LibreOffice menu, select Advanced and uncheck the option "use a Java Runtime environment".
Click on OK.
Regarding the last option, keep in mind that Java is used mainly for LibreOffice Base (the equivalent of Microsoft Access) so if you never use Base as it is likely for 99% of users, you can disable Java and lighten the program .
2) Learn Shortcut Keys
As with all programs, the best way to speed up your work is to learn and use key combinations so you can do things without taking your hands off the keyboard while writing.
The main shortcuts are the same as Microsoft Office and the main ones are:
F5 : To open the Navigator (see point 5)
F7 : To open the spelling and grammar checker.
F11 : To open the Styles and Formatting menu.
Ctrl + F12 : Insert a table.
Ctrl + Number : to change the writing style; CTRL-0 selects the main body style of the text.
On the LibreOffice website, you can find and learn all the keyboard shortcuts
3) Change the default file format with which to save the documents
By default, LibreOffice saves files using OpenDocument file formats (ODT for text documents, ODS for spreadsheets, ODP for presentations).
If you work alone and for yourself, these formats are fine.
However, if you plan to share these documents with other people, you cannot expect everyone to have this program, so it is better to save LibreOffice files with the same formats as Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Then open LibreOffice, go to the Tools menu, then to the Options menu and in the sidebar select Load / Save and then to General .
On the right, change the document type option by putting " Text Document " and change Always save as by putting Microsoft Word 2007/2013 XML .
In this way the Writer documents will be saved, unless you change manually, in Docx format, those of Calc in Xlsx format and those of Impress in Pptx .
If you prefer you can use the file format doc or xls or ppt instead by putting the option of Save always as on Word 97 2003
4) Change the icon set and button appearance
The default icon set used throughout LibreOffice can be changed to have a thinner, less distracting, more explanatory and clearer one.
From the Tools> Options menu, select LibreOffice and then on View to find the Icon size and style option on the right.
Among those that can be used, the best one is Breeze .
Alternatively, you can also use icons on LibreOffice to have the same menus as Microsoft Office, perfect for not losing familiarity with the program.
5) Use the navigator
If you work with files that are several pages long and complex with images, graphics, tables or other elements inside, the navigator is a fundamental tool.
You can open the navigator by pressing F5 or from the View menu.
The Navigator is a map of the entire document and provides a quick way to move from one section to another, to headings, tables, bookmarks, links, images and other elements.
6) Use of custom styles
Styles allow you to create quick presets to use to format text (choosing font type, size, margins, borders, etc.) according to the section of a document.
There are five main types of styles in LibreOffice Writer:
- Paragraph styles
- Character styles
- Frame styles
- Page styles
- List styles
From the Styles menu, go to Styles and Formatting to see all these custom styles and right click on the Default Style row to create a new one.
From the window that opens you can configure a new writing style for each type of element.
7) Creation of models
Templates serve to give a common look to all documents, so that they have the same style of paragraphs and other elements inside.
To change the default document template, create a new empty document, set the styles and formatting you want, go to the menu File> Templates and press on Save as template .
If you want to start from a ready-made model, click on File -> Models> Manage
On the LibreOffice templates website you can then download other ready-made templates for making invoices, resumes and other types of documents.
8) Toolbars
In LibreOffice you can choose which toolbars to see on the top menu by hiding those that are not needed and that can be confusing and moving the various buttons.
To do this, place the mouse on the left edge of a toolbar, click and hold when the cross cursor appears, dragging it where you want.
You can hold down CTRL and double-click any empty spot on a toolbar to unlink it from the top menu and make it a floating window.
To anchor it to the side, drag a toolbar above, below, right or left and release the mouse button when you see the shape of the bar with the marked outline.
You can "stack" the toolbars by dragging them one below the other or you can simply put them horizontally on the same line.
In case you lose one or to always keep an extra toolbar ready, go to the menu View> Toolbars to select the ones to display and deselect the ones to hide.
9) Install extensions
With extensions, LibreOffice can be enhanced as you would with Firefox or Chrome by adding more features.
Extensions can be downloaded from the Libreoffice website and can be added, deleted and managed within the program from the Tools> Extension Management menu.
As you can see, LibreOffice has come a long way since it was born as an independent project from OpenOffice back in 2010 and not only does it have all the basic functions of a word processing program, but it has all the most advanced features to optimize and customize it according to the taste and way of working.
If you really don't like LibreOFfice, I refer you to the other free alternatives to Microsoft Office .
