LibreOffice 24.8 Alpha 1 Open-Source Office Suite Released

Ahead of the planned release in August, the first alpha release of the LibreOffice 24.8 open-source office suite is now available for testing.

LibreOffice 24.8's Writer word processor now allows for the comment area to be resized, there is improved support for multi-page floating tables, improved hyphenation handling across pages, and more. The Calc spreadsheet component of LibreOffice 24.8 is adding XLOOKUP / XMATCH functions along with other new functions, improved localization, improved threaded calculation performance, and more.

LibreOffice 24.8 Chart meanwhile is working on new chart types "Pie of Pie" and "Bar of Pie" graphs, including the ability to import such charts from Microsoft Office / 365 OOXML files. LibreOffice 24.8 has also been working on improving its SVG filter, localization enhancements, and deprecating Windows 7 and Windows 8 support.

More details on the many changes coming with LibreOffice 24.8 via the Wiki release notes. Downloads and more details on the LibreOffice 24.8 Alpha 1 release via the Document Foundation QA blog.

The LibreOffice 24.8 schedule puts the beta coming up at the start of June, release candidates beginning in July, and a plan to officially release LibreOffice 24.8 around 19 to 25 August.