LibreOffice

Related articles
Apache OpenOffice
From
LibreOffice
website:
LibreOffice is a powerful, free and private office suite - the successor project to OpenOffice - used by millions of people around the world. It's compatible with Microsoft Office (365) and is backed by a non-profit organisation, The Document Foundation. LibreOffice includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).
[1]
Installation
Install
one of the following packages:
libreoffice-still
is the stable maintenance branch with relatively rare updates, for conservative users.
libreoffice-fresh
is the feature branch, with new program enhancements for early adopters or power users.
LibreOffice will be installed with an English user interface. Should a different language be desired, the appropriate language pack has to be installed; for example,
libreoffice-fresh-fr
for the French language pack.
After starting or restarting LibreOffice, the user interface should be the same as the system language; if it isn't, either the wrong language pack was installed or it has to be manually set. See
help.libreoffice.org
for additional information.
Note
In the past, the installation of at least one language pack was required. Currently, LibreOffice detects your system defaults and sets as locale setting; manual installation of a language pack is no longer needed, except to add additional languages. See
help.libreoffice.org
for additional information.
The British English language pack (
libreoffice-fresh-en-gb
) should not be confused with the pack for Ukrainian (
libreoffice-fresh-uk
) or Breton (
libreoffice-fresh-br
).
For the SDK, install
libreoffice-fresh-sdk
.
Check the optional dependencies pacman displays. If
HSQLDB
Embedded is in use for LibreOffice Base, you must install a
Java Runtime Environment
. You may need
hsqldb2-java
AUR
to use
some modules
in LibreOffice Base.
Theme
LibreOffice includes support for
GTK
and
Qt
theme integration. See also
Uniform look for Qt and GTK applications
.
LibreOffice will try to auto detect the most suitable
VCL
interface based on your desktop environment. To force the use of a certain VCL interface, e.g. "gtk4" set the
environment variables
SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk4
. For more user interface options see
/etc/profile.d/libreoffice-fresh.sh
or
/etc/profile.d/libreoffice-still.sh
, where the variables are listed and can be uncommented.
Log out and back in for the changes to take effect.
Note
When on Wayland with the VCL interface set to
qt6
, it can result in lag spikes when scrolling quickly. Setting the
environment variables
to
gtk3
with
export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3
seems to be mostly stable.
Extension management
The following additional extensions are available:
libreoffice-extension-texmaths
, which can create LaTeX mathematical equations (as PNG or SVG images) inside Writer, Impress, and Draw
[2]
libreoffice-extension-writer2latex
, which can convert Writer documents to LaTeX files
[3]
For more extensions, check the
AUR
, the built-in LibreOffice Extension manager, or
libreplanet
.
Fonts
The Document Foundation
wiki
mentions various fonts that are packaged by default with LibreOffice on Windows and macOS. On Arch, the following packages may be installed for the fonts:
ttf-caladea
ttf-carlito
ttf-dejavu
ttf-gentium-basic
AUR
ttf-liberation
ttf-linux-libertine-g
noto-fonts
adobe-source-code-pro-fonts
adobe-source-sans-fonts
adobe-source-serif-fonts
Also see
Fonts#Font packages
.
Language aids
Spell checking
For spell checking, make sure
hunspell
and a language dictionary for it are installed. Then enable the Writing aids by selecting the check-box in
Tools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids > Hunspell SpellChecker
after restarting LibreOffice.
Finnish
Unlike other languages, Finnish spellchecking and grammar checking are based on
Voikko
. For LibreOffice
voikko-libreoffice
AUR
should be installed.
Greek
Project
Orthos
provides more complete Greek spell checkers as Libreoffice extensions. Package
libreoffice-extension-orthos-greek-dictionary
AUR
provides a Greek-only spelling dictionary, while
libreoffice-extension-orthos-greek-english-dictionary
AUR
provides one that bundles Greek and US English.
Bidirectional support
Note
If your locale is set to a Bidi language, Libreoffice should enable CTL by default, but it might set it
incorrectly to Hindi
.
To enable Bidi support, select the check-box for
Complex Text Layout (CTL)
from:
Tools > Options... > Languages and Locales > General > Default Languages for Documents
, then choose the appropriate language. Language alignment can then be forced by
RCtrl + RShift
and
LCtrl + LShift
. There's a
known issue
that switches text direction when paragraph style changes.
Hyphenation rules
For hyphenation rules, you will need
hyphen
and a language hyphen rule set (
hyphen-en
for English,
hyphen-de
for German, etc).
Thesaurus
For the thesaurus option, you will need
libmythes
and a mythes language thesaurus (like
mythes-en
for English,
mythes-de
for German, etc).
Greek
For Greek, instead of
mythes-el
AUR
you may want to try out
libreoffice-extension-orthos-greek-thesaurus
AUR
, which includes more words.
Grammar checking with LanguageTool
For grammar checking,
several tools are available
. The most common is
languagetool
. Instructions on how to use it depend on which version of LibreOffice you have.
Since version 7.4,
LibreOffice supports LanguageTool natively
, no extensions are needed:
Click on
Tools > Options... > Language and Locales > LanguageTool Server
.
Enable LanguageTool by selecting the check-box.
The URL to use depends on whether you have a remote account (free or premium), or are running a local server:
If you have a remote free account, use
https://api.languagetool.org/v2
. Leave the other two text fields blank.
If you have a remote premium account, use
https://api.languagetoolplus.com/v2
as "Base URL", write your email address, and type in the API key.
If you have set up a
local LanguageTool server
, use
http://localhost:8081/v2
as "Base URL". Leave
User name
and
API Key
empty.
Click
OK
, and open a Writer document if one is not already open.
Select the check-box
Tools > Automatic Spell Checking
.
WritingTool
offers writing assistance with spelling and grammar (powered by LanguageTool), statistical analysis and AI support:
libreoffice-extension-writingtool
AUR
.
See
LanguageTool page for more information
.
Offline help
libreoffice-still
and
libreoffice-fresh
provide the offline help files for en-US. Help files for different locales is provided by the appropriate libreoffice language package, (i.e.,
libreoffice-fresh-en-za
provides the help files for en-ZA locales).
Tips and tricks
Speed up startup
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
Reason:
Spell-checking and grammar-checking does not affect the startup speed of LibreOffice and it significantly limits its features. (Discuss in
Talk:LibreOffice
)
Disable startup logo
: If you prefer to disable the startup logo screen with loading progress, open
/etc/libreoffice/sofficerc
, find the
Logo=
line and set it to
Logo=0
. Alternatively, use the
--nologo
CLI
option.
Disable Java Runtime
: If you are not using features that rely on Java, consider disabling the Java runtime. Go to
Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced
and uncheck
Use a Java runtime environment
.
Turn off AutoSpellcheck
: in
Tools > Options > Languages and Locales > Writing Aids
uncheck
Check spelling as you type
and
Check grammar as you type
.
Installing macros
If you intend to use macros, you must have a Java Runtime Environment enabled.
The default path for macros in Arch Linux is different from most Linux distributions. Its location is:
~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/Scripts/
.
Base as a database frontend
Base can be used as a frontend to a database like PostgreSQL. It cannot edit the tables but It gives a very nice overview of the columns and rows of a table with the possibility of hiding columns for better overview of the relevant data. It can also filter the data and enables deletion of multiple rows by selecting them and easy editing of single cells.
It can also help construct SQL queries with the help of a query GUI.
Automated document conversion based on LibreOffice or OpenOffice
Document conversion can be done by libreoffice directly if called with the
--headless
command line option. For example, to convert a
.odt
into
.pdf
file, you can issue:
$ libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf ./*.odt
One can also
$ libreoffice --cat ./*.odt
Both of these commands can not open password protected documents. They also require work around when old school
window managers
are used
[4]
.
Another option, which does not work with OpenOffice, is the
unoconvert
command line tool, and its companion tool
unoserver
, from the
python-unoserver
AUR
package.
unoconvert
is an automated conversion and styling tool that, by its
unoserver
companion, uses LibreOffice remote access capabilities. The package also has a
unocompare
and
unoping
tools. As of LibreOffice 26, circa February 2026, these tools replaced the previous
unoconv
command
[5]
. Some of the differences between
unoconv
and
unoconvert
is their output
[6]
and the fact that
unoconv
does work with OpenOffice. There are more details at
Comparison with unoconv
. There is no need for a graphical environment in order to use any of these tools. And they can open password protected documents.
Notification sounds
Some user actions like closing LibreOffice with an unsaved document will bring up the "Save Document?" popup window together with a notification sound. Enabling/disabling notification sounds can be tried by changing the GTK configuration option
gtk-enable-event-sounds
, see
GTK#Examples
.
Troubleshooting
A general way to track down problems is the safe mode in LibreOffice:
$ libreoffice --safe-mode
Font substitution
In case the document uses a font that is not installed in the system, LibreOffice will use an alternative font to render the document. This is called "font substitution".
LibreOffice uses
fontconfig
to resolve fonts.
To find out which font is the substitute for a missing font, you can issue:
$ fc-match "My Font"
If the result is something like
My Font.otf
, it means the font is correctly installed. If the result is something different, it means that "My Font" is not installed and is being substituted by something else.
Note that LibreOffice will
not
issue any errors or messages when it substitutes a font with another. It just puts the name of the font on the toolbar in italics, which mean the font is missing and is being substituted.
Substitution proposed by fontconfig can be overridden with LibreOffice. To override a fontconfig substitution, proceed as follows.
From the drop-down menu, select
Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Fonts
. Check the box that says
Apply Replacement Table
. Type the name of your font, for example
My Font
, in the font box and choose your desired font for the
Replace with
option. When done, click the
checkmark
. Then choose the
Always
and
Screen only
options in the box below. Click
OK
.
Anti-aliasing
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Font configuration
.
Notes:
please use the second argument of the template to provide more detailed indications.
(Discuss in
Talk:LibreOffice
)
Execute:
$ echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" | xrdb -merge
To make the change persistent, add
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
to your
~/.Xresources
file, and make sure to run
$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
(
source
). See
X resources
for more details.
If this does not work, you can also try adding
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
to your
~/.Xdefaults
. If you do not have this file, you will have to create it.
Hanging when using NFSv3 shares
If LibreOffice hangs when trying to open or save a document located on a NFSv3 share, try prepending the following lines with a
#
in
/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
:
# file locking now enabled by default
SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING=1
export SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING
To avoid overwriting on update you can copy
/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
in
/usr/local/bin
. Original post
here
.
LibreOffice does not detect certificates
See the
official documentation
.
Run .pps files in edit mode (without slideshow)
The only solution is to rename the
.pps
file to
.ppt
.
Add the following script to your home directory and use it to open every
.pps
file. Very useful to open
.pps
files received by email without the need to save them.
#!/bin/sh
f=$(mktemp --suffix .ppt)
cp "$1" "${f}" && libreoffice "${f}" && rm -f "${f}"
Media support
If embedded videos are just gray boxes, make sure to have installed the
GStreamer plugins
required.
Default paper size in Writer and Draw
If the default paper size in blank Writer and Draw documents is persistently incorrect for your locale, try installing the
libpaper
optional dependency and either updating
/etc/papersize
(for a system-wide change) or creating
~/.config/papersize
(for a user change) with your preferred paper size. See
paper(1)
and
paper --no-size --all
.
Note
libpaper
defaults to
Letter
paper size if nothing else has been set.
AutoText expected default behaviour not functional in system locales other than en_US
If expected default AutoText behaviour is not present (for example, typing
fn
in a document in Writer and then pressing the
F3
key does not result in the automatic insertion of a numbered function) when the system locale is not
en_US
you need to add the default
en_US
AutoText templates to your AutoText path. To do this, go to
Tools > AutoText...
, then click on
Path...
and add the following path to the list:
/usr/lib/libreoffice/share/autotext/en-US
. AutoText should now work as expected by default.
LibreOffice freezes or crashes
Disable OpenCL and/or OpenGL by setting the
environment variable
SAL_DISABLE_OPENCL=1
and/or
SAL_DISABLEGL=1
. The LibreOffice safe mode also offers the option to disable both.
If LibreOffice is freezing or failing to start with the message "Application Error" but works fine when OpenCL is disabled, try installing an
OpenCL runtime
.
Wayland and HiDPI
To work around issues with scaling UI elements in Wayland on HiDPI screens, try to specify a VCL interface (e.g.,
gtk3
or
qt6
). See
#Theme
.
Multiple screens with different scaling are affected by
a bug preventing proper scaling on all screens
. As a workaround start LibreOffice in
Xwayland
-mode (e.g.
WAYLAND_DISPLAY= libreoffice
).
kio-fuse and webdav
To ensure LibreOffice always falls back on
kio-fuse
for remote files (instead of its internal webdav implementation and password store), remove
,webdav,webdavs
from the
X-KDE-Protocols
key in all
libreoffice*.desktop
files.
KDE Plasma/GNOME + Wayland with or without fractional scaling results in terrible lag when scrolling
Users of KDE Plasma 6 and 5 and some users testing with GNOME have reported issues of terrible lag while scrolling through documents as reported in
[7]
. Running LibreOffice through X11
can
solve the issue (There are
reports
that the issue is not resolved in GNOME when using the GTK3 backend). This can be done individually by the setting the environment variable
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb libreoffice
while in KDE Plasma (QT) or
GDK_BACKEND=x11 libreoffice
while in GNOME (GTK). Each
.desktop
file can be edited to permanently apply the change until a fix is found. Users can also switch back to X11 to mediate the issue.
See also
Libreoffice Extensions and Templates
Wikipedia:LibreOffice