In the same way, many LibreOffice features look a lot like Microsoft's similar features. For instance, Alt-equals acts as the Autosum key in Calc, just as it does in Excel. If you don't know which keystroke to use in LibreOffice, there's a good chance it's the same as in Microsoft's apps.

One advantage of this approach is that it makes LibreOffice more easily accessible to former Microsoft Office users. The suite has always tried to emulate Microsoft 365's apps, right down to Office's menu structure and shortcut keys. The long history of LibreOffice and its ancestors, OpenOffice and StarOffice, helps explain how it looks and feels today.

You can also open each of the separate word-processing, spreadsheet, and other apps directly from the Start Menu. LibreOffice’s main menu lets you create or open any kind of document that the suite can create, and displays previews of recent files. Whatever you use is likely to be more modern and elegant than anything LibreOffice provides. You don't get anything for managing email, contacts, or calendars, but you probably use something else already.

LibreOffice includes a word-processor called Writer, a spreadsheet editor called Calc, a presentation app called Impress, a vector-drawing program called Draw, a database program called Base, and a math-formula editor called Math. It also doesn't offer any collaboration features or web-based versions of its apps. What holds back LibreOffice is its unwieldy interface and occasionally buggy performance. LibreOffice is also notably one of the few desktop-style office suites that costs nothing to use yet has a feature set that rivals Microsoft 365's. Open-source software has real appeal for government offices, financial firms, and other privacy-conscious users, because they can examine the source code for vulnerabilities themselves.

LibreOffice, now at version 7.4, is one of the best-known open-source office suites.

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