LibreOffice consists of several application modules (subprograms), which are designed to interact with each other. They are listed in Table 8.1. A full description of each module is available in the online help, described in Section 8.10, “For More Information”.

To start LibreOffice click Applications › Office › LibreOffice.

The following chapters cover individual LibreOffice modules:

In the selection dialog, choose the module you want to open or which file type you want to create. If any LibreOffice application is open, you can start any of the other applications by clicking File › New › Name of Application.

You can also start individual LibreOffice modules from your main menu. As an alternative, use the command libreoffice and one of the options --writer, --calc, --impress, --draw or --base to start the respective module. Find more useful options with --help.

Before you start working with LibreOffice, you may be interested in changing some options from the preferences dialog. Click Tools › Options to open it. The most important ones are:

To learn more about configuring LibreOffice, see Section 8.7, “Changing the Global Settings”.

LibreOffice can work with documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases in many other formats, including Microsoft Office. They can be easily opened like other files and saved back to the original format. If you have problems with your documents, consider opening them in the original application and resaving them in an open format such as RTF for text documents.

In case of migration issues with spreadsheets, however, it is advisable to always save them as Excel files. Use the Excel format as an intermediate format. The CSV format can work, too, but you will lose all cell formatting. CSV sometimes also leads to incorrect cell type detection for spreadsheets.

You can save files, no matter in which LibreOffice format, with a password. Note that this offers limited protection only. For stronger protection, use encryption methods as described in Book “Security Guide”, Chapter 11 “Encrypting Partitions and Files”. To save a file with a password, select File › Save or File › Save As. In the dialog that opens, activate the Save with password check box and click OK. After you have typed and confirmed your password, your file will be saved. The next time a user opens the file, he will be prompted for the password.

To change the password, either overwrite the same file by selecting File › Save As or select File › Properties and click Change Password to access the password dialog.

You can digitally sign documents to protect them. For this you need a personal certificate, similar to an HTTPS certificate. You can either create a self-signed certificate or choose to get one from a Certificate Authority.

When applying a digital signature to a document, a kind of checksum is created from the document's content and your personal key. The checksum is stored together with the document.

When another person opens the document, the checksum will be generated again. The new checksum is then compared to the original checksum If both are equal, the application will signal that the document has not been changed in the meantime.

To add a certificate to LibreOffice, you need to use Firefox. Start Firefox by selecting Applications › Internet › Firefox. Go to the certificates preferences by opening the menu (the button with the three-lines icon), then select Preferences › Advanced › Certificates › View Certificates. Add your certificate by selecting Your Certificates and clicking Import and then locate your certificate.

To sign a document, first open it in LibreOffice. Then select File › Digital Signatures › Sign Document. Select the certificate you want to use for signing, then click OK.

openSUSE Leap allows you to access certificates from the certificate store. For more information, refer to Book “Security Guide”, Chapter 12 “Certificate Store”.

You can customize LibreOffice to best suit your needs and working style. Toolbars, menus, and key combinations can all be reconfigured to help you more quickly access the features you use the most. You can also assign macros to application events if you want specific actions to occur when those events take place. For example, if you always work with a specific spreadsheet, you can create a macro that opens the spreadsheet and assign the macro to the Start Application event.

This section contains simple, generic instructions for customizing your environment. The changes you make are effective immediately, so you can see if the changes are what you wanted and go back and modify them if they are not. See the LibreOffice help files for detailed instructions.

To access the customization dialog in any open LibreOffice module, select Tools › Customize.

Figure 8.1: Customization Dialog in Writer #

Note: Further Information

Click Help for more information about the options in the Customize dialog.

If you want to switch back to the original settings again, open the customization dialog, click the Toolbar drop-down box and select Restore Default Settings. Click Yes and Reset to proceed.

Global settings can be changed in any LibreOffice application by clicking Tools › Options on the menu bar. This opens the window shown in the figure below. A tree structure is used to display categories of settings.

Figure 8.2: The Options Window #

The settings categories that appear depend on the module you are working in. For example, if you are in Writer, the LibreOffice Writer category appears in the list, but the LibreOffice Calc category does not. The LibreOffice Base category appears in both Calc and Writer. The Module column in the table shows where each setting category is available.

The following table lists the settings categories along with a brief description of each category:

Important: Settings Apply Globally

All settings listed in the table apply globally for the specified applications. That means, they are used as defaults for every new document you create.

A template is a document containing only the styles—and content— that you want to appear in every document of that type. When a document is created or opened with the template, the styles are automatically applied to that document. Templates greatly enhance the use of LibreOffice by simplifying formatting tasks for a variety of different types of documents.

For example, in a word processor, you can write letters, memos, and reports, all of which look different and require different styles. Or, for example, for spreadsheets, you could use different cell styles or headings for certain types of spreadsheets. If you use templates for each of your document types, the styles you need for each document are always readily available.

LibreOffice comes with a set of predefined templates, and you can find additional templates on the Internet. For details, see Section 8.10, “For More Information”. If you want to create your own templates, this requires some up-front planning. You need to determine how you want the document to look so you can create the styles you need in that template.

A detailed explanation of templates is beyond the scope of this section. Procedure 8.6, “Creating LibreOffice Templates” only shows how to generate a template from an existing document.

Note: Converting Microsoft Word Templates

You can convert Microsoft Word templates like you would convert any other Word document. For more information, see Section 8.3.1, “Converting Documents to the LibreOffice Format”.

When exchanging documents with other people, it is sometimes useful to store metadata like the owner of the file, who it was received from, and a URL. LibreOffice lets you attach such metadata to the file. This helps you track metadata which you do not want to or cannot save in the content of the file. This feature is also the basis for later sorting, searching and retrieving your documents based on metadata.

As an example, we assume you want to set these properties to your file:

To attach such metadata to your document, proceed as follows:

LibreOffice contains extensive online help. In addition, a large community of users and developers support it. The following lists shows some places where you can go for additional information.