LibreOffice Fixes Excel and PowerPoint Compatibility Issues in Latest Update

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 26.8.3, bringing 45 bug fixes, stability improvements, and better compatibility with Microsoft Office files.

The update addresses problems with PowerPoint presentations, Excel formulas, large Office documents, and crashes affecting several LibreOffice applications.

LibreOffice improves compatibility with Microsoft Office files

According to the official release notes, LibreOffice 26.8.3 fixes an issue where numbered lists in PowerPoint (PPTX) presentations displayed the same number repeatedly instead of following the correct sequence.

The update also fixes a problem that caused valid Office files larger than 2 GiB to appear corrupted when they did not use the Zip64 format.

In Calc, the TEXTAFTER and TEXTBEFORE functions now behave more consistently with Microsoft Excel, improving compatibility when users exchange spreadsheets between the two applications.

Microsoft Office compatibility has been a recurring point of disagreement between the companies. LibreOffice previously blamed Microsoft for chart compatibility issues and accused the company of manipulating the OOXML approval process.

LibreOffice 26.8.3 fixes crashes in Writer, Calc, Draw, and Impress

Beyond file compatibility, the update resolves several stability problems across the office suite.

Draw and Impress receive fixes for crashes involving copying, pasting, and comments. Writer fixes a crash that occurred when users inserted a section around an existing nested section.

Calc also addresses freezes when editing default table styles and crashes when rearranging column fields in pivot tables.

Other improvements include better integration with the macOS system UI font, support for signing documents with X.509 certificates, and more reliable file attachments when using Thunderbird.

The update also improves Kurdish alphabetical sorting and Japanese collation.

LibreOffice 26.8.3 is available now. Users running LibreOffice 26.2.x should upgrade before November 30 to continue receiving security and maintenance updates.

In other news, LibreOffice recently criticized Microsoft Office’s one-size-fits-all interface. The open-source office suite has also emerged as an alternative to Microsoft Publisher as Microsoft prepares to end support for the application.

Via Neowin