The German company SoftMaker has published FreeOffice 2024the new version of its multiplatform office suite, which is a free and stripped-down version of SoftMaker Office, a paid product, and SoftMaker Office NX, a subscription service based on artificial intelligence. It is one of the most popular alternatives to Microsoft Office, but the fact that it is proprietary in all its aspects has made it lose audience to LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE.
FreeOffice 2024, like previous versions of the suite, is made up of three applications: the word processor Textmaker, the spreadsheets PlanMaker, and the presentations that can be created and viewed with Presentations. In addition to OOXML, i.e. the default formats of Microsoft Office since version 2007, FreeOffice also supports its ownwhich have been developed by SoftMaker.
Despite being a proprietary solution with some touches of vendor lock due to the use of its own formats, FreeOffice 2024 is another alternative to Microsoft Office that is available for Linux, so we are going to mention the main new features that have been incorporated compared to the previous version of the suite. Since there is no official announcement or release notes available, we are going to rely on what was published by OMG Ubuntu.
FreeOffice 2024
For Textmaker the following has arrived:
- Select multiple non-contiguous ranges of text using the key
ctrl - Embedding fonts in TMDX and DOCX documents
- File paragraph styles by “All Styles,” “Styles in Use,” or “Styles in the Document.”
- Lists numbered with leading zeros are now supported
- List numbering can now be right aligned
- Wear
=rand()either=lorem()to generate dummy text
Spreadsheets PlanMaker have received the following updates:
- Import and export to SQLite databases.
- Sort and filter by color options
- Set date order when opening CSV files
- Chart titles, axis titles, and data labels are now fetched dynamically from cells
- Pivot tables can be sorted using user-defined lists.
- Input line can be extended or expanded automatically
Slideshows with Presentation have added the following things:
- Dynamic slide transitions compatible with PowerPoint
- It is possible to play audio and video on Linux through the application
- Create presentations with built-in fonts in Linux
- Toggle to hide/show rulers in full screen mode
And finally we have the news that has reached the suite set:
- An option to use a modern type interface ribbon o classic menus and toolbars
- Menus can be accessed from the standard user interface. ribbon
- A quick access toolbar with important functions
- A touch mode option for larger icons and more padding
- A PDF export option to export images at a lower resolution
- A ‘Paste Special’ option to include/remove formatting
- Support for inserting WebP images into documents
- Support for rotating table cells from the UI type ribbon
As we can see, FreeOffice 2024 has brought a couple of specific new features for Linux, which are responsible for improving the experience with fonts and multimedia through the application of slide presentations. Regarding WebP, the sad thing is that today there is so much software that does not support it, since it is an image format that offers a good relationship between quality and occupied space and also supports transparencies.
FreeOffice 2024 is available for free and with all its applications from the downloads section of its official website, with versions for Linux, Windows and macOS.
