LibreOffice

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LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.

Installation

Install one of the following packages:

libreoffice-still is the stable maintenance branch, for conservative users.
libreoffice-fresh is the feature branch, with new program enhancements for early adopters or power users.

Note:

In the past, the installation of at least 1 language pack was required. Currently, LibreOffice detects your system defaults and sets as locale setting; manual installation of a language pack is no longer mandatory, required only for localized user interface. See help.libreoffice.org for additional information.
If you want the UK-English language pack, install libreoffice-fresh-en-gb, not libreoffice-fresh-uk (Ukrainian) or libreoffice-fresh-br (Breton)!
For SDK install libreoffice-fresh-sdk.

Check the optional dependencies pacman displays. If you use HSQLDB Embedded in 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 autodetect the most suitable VCL UI interface based on your desktop environment. To force the use of a certain VCL UI interface, use one of the SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen, SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3, or SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kf5 environment variables. These variables can be uncommented in /etc/profile.d/libreoffice-fresh.sh or /etc/profile.d/libreoffice-still.sh. See vcl/README.md for more information.

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.

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 [1]
libreoffice-extension-writer2latex, which can convert Writer documents to LaTeX files [2]

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:

Also see Fonts#Font packages.

Language aids

Spell checking

For spell checking, please make sure hunspell is properly installed; this should be the case for both still and fresh LibreOffice versions. Then install a language dictionary for hunspell like hunspell-en_us for American English or hunspell-de for German (check the AUR if your language is not in the official repositories). 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 dictionaries use different naming. These four packages should be installed (in this order): libvoikko, malaga^AUR, voikko-fi^AUR, hfstospell^AUR and voikko-libreoffice^AUR.

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.

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

For grammar checking, several tools are available. The most common is LanguageTool. You can either:

install the libreoffice-extension-languagetool^AUR package, or
download it from the LibreOffice Extensions page and manually install it in LibreOffice through Tools > Extension

After this extension has been installed, please make sure you have a Java 8 runtime installed (jre8-openjdk). Indeed, Languagetool uses Java and may slow down or briefly hang LibreOffice, particularly while opening documents. Fortunately this is usually only when initially opening a document and is usually not apparent otherwise. Once installed, you want to enable it as the default environment for LibreOffice. To do that go to Tools > Options > Advanced and select the appropriate JRE (it will be shown as 1.8.0) then press Ok. You will be prompted to restart the LibreOffice suite. Once restarted you will be able to install Languagetools without trouble.

Other grammar tools can also be found on the LibrePlanet extension page, on the official LibreOffice Extensions website or OpenOffice's Website. Please note all OpenOffice extensions are guaranteed to work with LibreOffice.

French

French-speaking users are advantaged here: they do not need to install LanguageTool nor Java. Grammalecte provides a nice Python extension. You can install it from the website or via libreoffice-extension-grammalecte-fr^AUR. In any case, this extension also comes with the French dictionaries otherwise provided by hunspell-fr.

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).

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/.

Tips and Tricks

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

The command line tool unoconv is an automated conversion and styling tool that uses LibreOffice. Even tough it requires more work [3], it is still very useful as it is. It either connects to a running LibreOffice, starts one for its own usage, or connects to a running instance that was started explicitly for its usage. A running X server is not required.

Troubleshooting

A general way to track down problems is the safe mode in LibreOffice:

$ libreoffice --safe-mode

Font substitution

These settings can be changed in the LibreOffice options. From the drop-down menu, select Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Fonts. Check the box that says Apply Replacement Table. Type Andale Sans UI 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. You will then need to go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View, and uncheck "Use system font for user interface". If you use a non-antialised font, such as Arial, you will also need to uncheck "Screen font antialiasing" before menu fonts render correctly.

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 my certificates

If you cannot see the certificates when trying to sign a document, you will need to have the certificates configured in Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird). If after that LibreOffice still does not show them, set the MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER environment variable to point to your Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird) folder:

export MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER=$HOME/.mozilla/firefox/XXXXXX.default/

Certificate detection.

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 exporting the PAPERSIZE environment variable (for a user change) with your preferred paper size. See papersize(5).

Note: libpaper defaults to Letter paper size if nothing else has been set.

LibreOffice toolbars unreadable with dark Breeze/Plasma 5 theme

Change the icon style in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View > Icon Style to "Breeze Dark" or another readable icon style. You may need to install the breeze-gtk package.

If that is not enough, ensure that LibreOffice starts using the gtk3 or gen interface (see #Theme).[4]

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.

LibreOffice fails to start

Not sure with the reason why this happened. When you encounter LibreOffice fails to start and in terminal it says the following:

/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/libskialo.so: undefined symbol: FT_Palette_Select
/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/libskialo.so: undefined symbol: FT_Get_Color_Glyph_Layer
/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/libskialo.so: undefined symbol: FT_Get_Paint

Try to start it with:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libfreetype.so libreoffice

It has something to do with FreeType. Check that you are using the official freetype2 package. Older versions from the AUR may have linking errors.

$ ldd /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/libskialo.so
      linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff861d4000)
      libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007ff740060000)
      libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007ff740015000)
      libpng16.so.16 => /usr/lib/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007ff73ffde000)
      libdl.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007ff73ffd8000)
      libX11-xcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libX11-xcb.so.1 (0x00007ff73ffd3000)
      libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007ff73fe92000)
      libuno_sal.so.3 => /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/libuno_sal.so.3 (0x00007ff73fe28000)
      libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007ff73fc4b000)
      libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007ff73fb05000)
      libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007ff73faeb000)
      libpthread.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007ff73fac9000)
      libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007ff73f900000)
      /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007ff7408aa000)
      libbz2.so.1.0 => /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007ff73f8eb000)
      libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x00007ff73f8d1000)
      libharfbuzz.so.0 => /usr/lib/libharfbuzz.so.0 (0x00007ff73f7fd000)
      libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007ff73f7ce000)
      libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007ff73f7a4000)
      libgraphite2.so.3 => /usr/lib/libgraphite2.so.3 (0x00007ff73f77d000)
      libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x00007ff73f649000)
      libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00007ff73f644000)
      libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007ff73f63c000)
      libpcre.so.1 => /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1 (0x00007ff73f5ca000)

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 configurations option "gtk-enable-event-sounds", see GTK#Examples

Wayland and HiDPI

To work around issues with scaling UI elements in Wayland on HiDPI screens, use the gtk3 VCL UI interface. See #Theme.