What is LibreOffice?
LibreOffice is a freely available, fully-featured office productivity suite. Its native file format is Open
Document Format (ODF), an open standard format that is being adopted by governments
worldwide as a required file format for publishing and accepting documents. LibreOffice can also
open and save documents in many other formats, including those used by several versions of
Microsoft Office.
LibreOffice includes the following components.
Writer (word processor)
Writer is a feature-rich tool for creating letters, books, reports, newsletters, brochures, and other
documents. You can insert graphics and objects from other components into Writer documents.
Writer can export files to HTML, XHTML, XML, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), and
several versions of Microsoft Word files. It also connects to your email client.
Calc (spreadsheet)
Calc has all of the advanced analysis, charting, and decision making features expected from a
high-end spreadsheet. It includes over 300 functions for financial, statistical, and mathematical
operations, among others. The Scenario Manager provides “what if” analysis. Calc generates 2D
and 3D charts, which can be integrated into other LibreOffice documents. You can also open and
work with Microsoft Excel workbooks and save them in Excel format. Calc can also export
spreadsheets in several formats, including for example Comma Separated Value (CSV), Adobe
PDF and HTML formats.
Impress (presentations)
Impress provides all the common multimedia presentation tools, such as special effects, animation,
and drawing tools. It is integrated with the advanced graphics capabilities of LibreOffice Draw and
Math components. Slideshows can be further enhanced using Fontwork special effects text, as
well as sound and video clips. Impress is compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint file format and can
also save your work in numerous graphics formats, including Macromedia Flash (SWF).
Draw (vector graphics)
Draw is a vector drawing tool that can produce everything from simple diagrams or flowcharts to
3D artwork. Its Smart Connectors feature allows you to define your own connection points. You can
use Draw to create drawings for use in any of the LibreOffice components, and you can create
your own clip art and then add it to the Gallery. Draw can import graphics from many common
formats and save them in over 20 formats, including PNG, HTML, PDF, and Flash.
Base (database)
Base provides tools for day-to-day database work within a simple interface. It can create and edit
forms, reports, queries, tables, views, and relations, so that managing a relational database is
much the same as in other popular database applications. Base provides many new features, such
as the ability to analyze and edit relationships from a diagram view. Base incorporates two
relational database engines, HSQLDB and PostgreSQL. It can also use dBASE, Microsoft Access,
MySQL, or Oracle, or any ODBC compliant or JDBC compliant database. Base also provides
support for a subset of ANSI-92 SQL.
Math (formula editor)
Math is the LibreOffice formula or equation editor. You can use it to create complex equations that
include symbols or characters not available in standard font sets. While it is most commonly used
16 | Getting Started with LibreOffice 5.1
